Replacing the trimmer fishing line with a steel cable

A trimmer with a weak motor can barely cope with the delicate lawn grass, not to mention real weeds. Working with it turns into a waste of time, but if you equip it with a steel cable instead of a fishing line, it instantly turns even small branches of shrubs into mulch. Switching to a cable does not require complex alteration and will take a couple of minutes. Its installation will help both a weak trimmer and a tool with a broken coil.

Materials:

• steel cable up to 2 mm with thick veins;
• rubber bushing.

Installing the cable in the trimmer

First of all, you need to disassemble the coil and cut off the cable of the desired length.
It is equal to two distances from the center of the head to the protective cover of the trimmer. In the middle, the cable bends and opens with two pliers to get a small loop.
A rubber sleeve with a slightly larger internal diameter than the shaft on the trimmer is inserted into the loop formed. In the absence of a sleeve, the loop can be wrapped with electrical tape, but this will be a short-term solution. After the cable loosened on the loop, you need to wind it back by pressing the sleeve.
For reliability, diverging sleeves from it can be additionally protected from unwinding with knitting wire. It should be wound on a cable, but without fanaticism.
The cable is tucked into the base of the head, and the sleeve fits onto the trimmer motor shaft. After that, the lid is installed. The spool for such a cable installation is not required, so it must be put aside for storage.
Before using the trimmer, make sure that the ends of the cable do not catch the protective cover.
The described method of installing the cable is suitable for many models of trimmers, but there are types of heads with different operating principles. They can also be transferred to a cable, and often even easier, because they imply a rigid fixation of the fishing line. In this situation, you do not even need a sleeve.
A trimmer equipped with a cable is capable of breaking strong stems of plants and thin branches of overgrown shrubs into mulch. Of course, mowing with a cable is less secure than fishing line, so you need to use a protective mask and high boots. It is important that the cable has as thick a core as possible, then it will last longer. Its total thickness should not exceed 2-3 mm. It must be taken into account that the inertia of the cable is several times higher than that of the fishing line, therefore it cannot be installed in ordinary coils. In this case, their plastic antennae may break.