I've had a cheapish black and decker hedge trimmer for about 10 years and it's always done OK for the little that I ask of it. This year it jams almost straight away. I know you can sharpen the blades but I don't want to go to the hassle of doing this only to find out that it wasn't the problem. I recently lent it to someone so I don't know its most recent history.
Do hedge trimmers jam for any reason other than blunt blades? or is there something internal that is just old and worn and it's time to get another one.
Electric or petrol? What happens when it jams - do you have to leave it for a while, or do something to it to free it up again, or does it "just work"?
My AEG hedger is double sided. A twig jamming one side can cause the teeth on the other side to conflict.
The cure is to carefully shorten the spacer sleeves which control the gap between the reciprocating blades and the fixed cover strips. I used a bench grinder and a coarse oil stone.
For once the angle grinder solution might be too much!
I bought a B&D hedge trimmer in 1982. It never worked properly from the start. It would only cut the thinnest stems of wood. Anything substantial, and it would jam, making a loud squealing noise. As the motor warmed up, the problem got worse, and it would hardly cut anything.
As I didn't live far from the B&D service centre near Maidenhead, I took the trimmer there to be looked at. I picked it up a week later, and found it was working perfectly.
Many years later, I had occasion to dismantle the trimmer in order to do a bit of judicious straightening of the teeth of the cutting blades. These had gradually splayed apart, and there was now a gap of around 1mm between them. This, of course, resulted in a fairly a poor cutting action.
Disconnecting the blades from the motor revealed the gears, and I could now see what the original problem had almost certainly been. One gear wheel was splined onto the motor shaft, and I'm sure that the problem was that the splines had originally been partially stripped, so that slipping occurred at first sign of resistance (hence the jamming and the squealing).
I've still got the hedge trimmer, and it still sees the occasional bit of action. After 29 years, I feel I can now forgive the initial fault. I wonder if the OP's trimmer has a similar problem?
I have opened it up for a look around and saw the gears that you refer to but they look to be in good order. I don't have a bench grinder and oilstones so I'm going to have a go at sharpening it - now where's that angle grinder?
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