![]() My wrist is not in an ergonomically neutral position, and it is holding down a button the whole time. If you look at my right hand in the photo above, it is bent and twisted as it is holding down the trigger. ![]() I found I quickly tired of holding down the trigger, so that I had to take frequent pauses to rest my hand. We’ve had such frequent rain and heavy dews that I despaired of ever finding the ideal conditions for trimming. I did have to make a couple of passes to get things trimmed the way I wanted, but the grass was high and also damp–which it’s not supposed to be. Since this was the first time I had ever used a trimmer, I have nothing to compare it to in terms of efficiency. For me, it seemed to work best when I started with the trimmer head on the left and moved it towards the right. Cutting from the left improves the unit’s cutting efficiency.” Huh? To my mind, the second sentence contradicts the first. I followed the manual’s advice to “cut grass over 8 inches (ahem!) by working from top to bottom in small increments,” but these instructions confused me: “Cut from right to left whenever possible. Seriously, my kids have had noisier toys.Īt first it didn’t seem to be cutting very well, but then my photographer said, “Try holding the trigger down more!” Whee! It sure spun around faster with just a little bit of encouragement. The motor is quiet ear protection is not required. But you have to hold the trigger down the whole time. You only have to press the lockout button when you first start it. Yes! I am operating a string trimmer for the first time!There are two buttons to deal with: the throttle lockout button and the throttle trigger. I might wear out the string a little faster, but no plants would be hurt by my klutziness. I’d trim the grass at the base of a stone wall. I decided for my first time I would attempt something a little more fail-proof than trimming a flower bed’s eyelashes. Eyelash edges would be a thing of the past. In fact, the whole time I operated it, my right forearm was busy pushing down on the weight of the battery. Once I put it in the trimmer, it changed the whole balance of it and I had to practice my proper holding technique all over again. (It is wise to design such things so that even idiots can’t screw it up.) But it is heavy. You can figure it out without reading the manual. The battery is easy to insert in the charger and easy to insert in the trimmer. Sometimes it pays to read the instructions. And I realized that holding it as the manual instructed did not strain my back as I had feared. What I discovered, is that the only way I could hold my slightly bent right arm on the housing grip and my straight left arm on the D-grip and keep the cutting heat parallel to the ground, was by positioning the tool diagonally across my body, instead of straight out in front, as I had expected. There’s a picture of a teensy (13/16 of inch, I measured) man illustrating the proper grip. So I practiced holding the trimmer correctly before I put the battery in. I’ve been struggling with back problems all summer, and I was afraid using this thing would hurt my back. What do you think? How Do You Work This Thing? The small print was intentional.I’m all for reducing waste, but to me, this just seems penny-wise and pound-foolish. At first I mistook them for the warranty. You see, the actual installation and operating instructions are in very small print. Much to my surprise, this turned out to be my greatest challenge. (I know, you non-manual-readers are thinking, “How hard can it be?”) And so, for it to be a fair review of Troy-Bilt’s trimmer, I had to read up on the trimmer’s operation. How else can you be sure you are putting it together correctly? Furthermore, I had never operated a string trimmer before in my life. I am one of those people who believe in reading the manual before assembling anything. ![]() Yes, I want to test that trimmer!” Read The Fine Print I, myself, could eliminate the eyelash edges, without spending hours cutting a new edge on all those beds. Not heavy like a super-duper heavy-duty gasoline-powered trimmer (which we already have), and no cord trailing behind me, getting tangled up in who knows what. So, when Troy-Bilt asked me if I’d like to try this trimmer, I thought, “This trimmer sounds like something I could handle. Thus, the flower beds develop an eyelash fringe of longer grass where they meet the lawn. And when it does finally get cut, the one operating the mower isn’t quite sure where the lawn ends and the flower bed begins, and so he doesn’t cut quite as close to the edge as he should. Because of rainy weather, equipment breakdown, or other cause, the lawn doesn’t get cut when it should. When the one cutting the grass is afraid to get too close to the flowers, the beds develop eyelash edges.
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