Hi James, I have (probably) the same weed whacker you have! Craftsman Model 358.791170 which takes multiple attachments.
Please tell me more about how well/poorly the attachments work because I only have the weed-wacker attachment.
I never bought the edger or pruner attachments (although I could sorely use both but I wondered how well/badly they worked).
BTW, be warned, my Craftsman trimmer has the "built with Sim-Pul for smooth easy starts" (which is a crock because twice I had to replace the entire starter assembly because the clutch didn't disengage so the weed trimmer melted the plastic starter assembly).
I got a great idea. Because you don't want to take the advise of other, wiser individuals why don't you just do what your bright mind tells you to do. Go ahead and use a wire and let us know how it works. One caution though, make sure nobody is anywhere in sight when you fire that trimmer up the shit his the fan.
No, I have a ryobi. It's also "easy pull" so I suspect your craftsman may be a ryobi. Sears doesn't actually make anything. It's worth keeping up with who is making stuff for them as sometimes you can get a deal on an item that would be pricier under it's original label. I still have a big mac chain saw I bought under their label 30 years back when mac was the name to get.
It ought to start in a couple pulls or maybe you are priming too much or too little. Usually it's hard starting the results in broken starters.
They standardized the attachment mounts among most of these. I have the little chain saw and the pruner but I think they are a different brand. One of them came with a 2 foot extension pole. I already had a dedicated stick edger but I'm sure the attachemnt one would be about the same. I have a number of high trimming and pruning chores that I have to do a couple times a year so these worked well for my needs because of the reach. So I'm not really using them enough to tell if they have wear issues. If I was doing it for a living I would get all dedicated stuff.but as a homeowner it's just too expensive.
Of the 18 inches of the 150 feet of 0.130" nylon strands I cut (the original strand was about 16 inches but I make mine longer ostensibly so they last longer), 6 inches stick out of each side of the hub.
The motor is on a Craftsman 358.791170 which if I look it up has a manual at
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The manual says it's a "33cc/2.0 cu.in. 2-cycle gasoline weedwacker" and that it meets California emissions regulations for small off-road engines.
It takes optional attachments (none of which I have): Edger ................. 358.79240 Cultivator ............ 358.79241 Blower ................ 358.79242 Brushcutter ........... 358.79244 Pruner ................ 358.79245
It says to use red line (#71-85908) for cutting grass and small weeds and black colored line (#71-85909) for cutting larger weeds and light brush.
The soil is (rather young) typical Franscisian sediments, only about 30 million years old, so there are no solid (as in granite) "rocks" per se, no quartz, no conglomerate, just soft shales and limestones and harder chert; but, the soil is almost wholly chips and flakes of deep ocean sediments so the weedwacker will almost always touch something hard.
BTW, the instructions say never wack from right to left, only from left to right (like you read a book), which is interesting in and of itself.
Yeah. Even these attachments are $150 dollars or so (just for the attachment).
I do need a good looooooong hedge trimmer as my 20 inch hedge trimmer is too short for the tops of a line of very tall bushes that I can't reach except on a ladder and even then I have to lean halfway over the ledge, which is dangerous so I don't do it. A longer hedge trimmer (about 40 inches would be nice) is what I really need - but money is always an object.
Likewise for the edger attachment. I have a few hundred yards of edging that has been neglected. Sure I have a MANUAL edger, but, I'm getting too old for that wheel and spring thingey. :(
If I KNEW the edger and/or hedge trimmer attachments were useful, I'd likely get them over time though.
If you want to chew up the countryside why toy with a piece of copper wire man. Get yourself one of these . That's a solid steel blade in there. If you really want to make a mess of things you could replace the normal blade with a 10" carbide tipped saw blade. Danger? Men like you laugh at danger.
I used aircraft cable and it worked fine and lasted much longer than monofilament. It's one of those times, though, when you wear long pants and wear safety goggles.
Not sure they're the same units, but I have the Troy-Bilt 4-cycle trimmer with a leaf blower and edger attachments. They work really well. The only issue I have with the system is that the nozzle on the blower is constantly blowing off. I could glue it on but then to get it off...
I doubt it would have enough power for the cultivator, though (so I didn't get one).
In my experience, longer strings wear much faster due to higher tip speeds. The line I use splits, which makes it less effective for cutting and quicker to disappear. For heavy cutting or chain-link fences I'll snip the lines to less than the nominal 17" diameter.
I wonder what the specs are for those lines. Perhaps the line you bought is unsuited to this trimmer.
I've used nylon trimmer blades whose manufacturer recommended soaking before use so they'd be less brittle. Maybe soaking would help your line.
It depends on which way the head rotates. Mine rotates clockwise. If I swing it to the right, the right side cuts, throwing debris toward me.
Go ahead and try the wire. Ask again when the wire breaks off and harpoons you in the ankle.
Trimmer string won't hurt you when it comes flying off the trimmer head. Either it comes off in small harmless chunks, or it curls up into a wad.
Circular saws, lawn mowers, etc. all have SHIELDS to protect you from the blade if it should break or come apart. Jigsaws and drill bits break when they're embedded in the material they're trying to cut, and the material keeps the broken pieces from turning into shrapnel.
String trimmers don't have that kind of shielding. You couldn't get close to whatever you were trimming around if they were properly shielded.
Wires, saw blades, and chains will also cause damage to the things you're trying to mow around. They will take chunks out of cinder blocks. They will peel the bark off trees. They will gouge posts.
Fat lot of good trimming around the tree does you if you girth the tree with the trimmer and cause it to die.
If that's true, it's a trick on me that I added two inches to the 16-inch string (to make it 18 inches) for the purpose of having the string last longer ... only to find that it might make the string actually last shorter! :(
It does the job on my couple of hundred feet of edging each week, anyway.
Let me elaborate, a little. I don't use it to blow leaves; got none (left them behind in Vermont, with the taxes). I use it to blow the grass clippings off the street and driveway after I do the edging. It does a nice job of that, and the bark mulch, red sand, and Mica that inevitably washes out of our flower beds.
When I was doing my own yard trimming, the string trimmer I had came with a replacement lower end that held a flat bar of about1/8" or 3/16" steel an inch or so wide and about 12" long. It was used to edge alongside a walk or driveway, cutting a groove in the soil like a traditional edger. It would have been terrible as a line trimmer, but sure did a good job along the driveway and sidewalk. You could also remove the knife-like blade and replace it with a heavy duty circular saw-type blade to cut brush. The trimmer came with a harness you wore in the situation that prevented the long tube and blade from coming close to operator body parts.
For trimming around stone walls, foundations and decorative rocks, however, my replacement "line" of aircraft cable did the trick.
Besides the 48 in. per hr. of cutting string, u you also have to calculate your time that it takes to change that string. RIDICULES!!!I went and asked at my sears store if there was a replacement "tap & go" head for this aggravating thing. From the Sears salesperson (and a consensuses of store employees) "I don't know". I was told to check with local lawn mower shop to see if they had some different heads that I might try. So much for Sear's knowledgeable personnel. Just happened to have an old head in my shop from a previous weedeater which I owned, tried it and it fit perfectly (lucky)I don't remember what it came off of and didn't have any name brand on it, so I hope that I don't have to replace it. The head was a large capacity head that will hold up to 0.105 line size, which is plenty big enough and besides none of it is wasted. I now have nothing against the Weedwacker. Plenty of power (33cc), starts every time and with the head fully loaded, I can cut until it runs out of gas. (The way it should be!!!)
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