Brush Cutter

I have a 36V makita with "bicycle handlebar" style shoulder-harness, it can take strimmer line for grass and lighter weeds, or a brush-cutter blade.

I use a flat blade which I crudely sharpen once a year by angle grinder. Recently John Rumm mentioned a "3D" blade that was good for brambles etc.

It'll mostly depend on what battery platform(s) you have. They tend to need power, which means you're talking 40V (or 2x18V) systems - chunky batteries for chunky amounts of change. If you already have power tools, look to see if that brand does a brush cutter - may be cheaper to buy one of those than invest in a new battery platform.

Makita do some which take 2x 18v LXT batteries, which means you can use 18v batteries you might already have rather than buy new 40v/54v/60v batteries. But they're often in the £200 bracket just for the tool.

Some of them have adjustable systems where there's a motor pole and then you swap in brushcutter / strimmer / hedge trimmer / pole saw ends. Makita has one of those, but it's no cheaper than buying the regular brushcutter (but handy if you also wanted another tool it supports). Parkside have one of those on at Lidl at the moment (battery and charger extra):

There's also lethal weapons available for cheap:

Theo

Mine goes through a pair of 5A or 6A batteries much faster in strimmer mode than brushcutter mode, the heavy blade maintains angular momentum unlike the line.

Theo <theom+ snipped-for-privacy@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in news:3al* snipped-for-privacy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

Superb! Almost worth a trip over at that price. Why not here I wonder?

A relative has their petrol version but is unable to use it due to size and weight.

Quoted "Low noise", bar the involuntary amputation screams I assume.

That said I did buy (and safely use) a similar saw blade in a battery AG recently as there was no other way to do the job at a remote location - fence post trims.

Brexit (probably). Likely they have an island-of-Ireland supply chain, while their UK supply chain is separate. Easier to supply the handful of NI stores by a lorry from over the border from the Republic than take them on a ferry from GB.

I was hoping some enterprising individual was buying them and selling on ebay, which they are... at £299 (including battery and charger). Err, perhaps not.

There was a petrol brushcutter at Aldi (Scheppach) at a similar bargain price, which I've got. But actually so far have managed to keep the brambles down with a hedge trimmer, which is less faff than setting up the petrol.

Circular saw not an option?

Theo

Yup it minces brambles, and small saplings :-)

You can stick that style of blade on most straight shaft line trimmer heads. So I expect it would go on something like:

The cutting action relies mostly on the momentum of the blade- so it might not be that critical that the machine has massive power. (my 21cc power head is probably only a bit of 1kW of output). I would expect a

As you say they are relatively pricy (about £250 "body only") though.

Theo <theom+ snipped-for-privacy@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in news:0al* snipped-for-privacy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

I just don't know, surely an outfit like Aldi would have resolved such issues<?>. I suspect given the much reduced price that it is a supply issue and that they have volume in NI but not in UK.

. . . indeed, hopefully all here will be on-page with chancer alert/dar

It's in a rural location and for a relative of short stature so mains power and weight are compromising factors. I'd suggest a high powered battery option but don't want to propose a high cost option that may result in further disappointment for whatever reason. I should prob visit (it's some distance) and try out the existing petrol powered tools before making a suggestion/recommendation. It's a mix of long stemmed grasses and tougher brush so it really needs a test of blade over whip to decide on an effective solution. In the mean time the jungle grows.

Nah, no other requirement for a batt circ saw and I've been around the block enough to know when what might go wrong in such situations (kicks/jams etc). It was a fine-ish toothed blade in a guarded Lidl batt AG which had speed control to moderate risk and admirably had stall mitigation to cope with grab in the required slots. Excess PPE in place to cover the bases I might have missed.

Wouldn't have considered such in an old-school full speed and uncontrolled AG but felt this was a decent option for an experienced user. And I am very much risk averse.

Have you considered an Austrian scythe? A joy to use.

Tim

I gave it some consideration, but on reflection concluded that the amount of woody saplings tangled up in the brambles would be enough to spoil the fun.

(that and that kind of twisting motion seems to wind my back up!)

Is there nothing a Bobcat cannot do ?

I did permanent damage to my back, by swinging a tool in a way that I was not used to. I did the work for maybe three hours, and while I felt OK at the time, later I could feel that something had changed. And now my back is a constant nag. The back doctor just gave a glib "you've got a bit of wear there", and said he wasn't going to do anything. This is why we have doctors, to state the obvious like that.

My opinion on using the "he-man" approach to vegetation control has changed. You should at least use a tool that has an artificial power source, whether it's petrol or mains powered. If the tool is heavy, you'll get properly tired after a few hours, call it quits for the day, and come back another day for another session.

They only give you one spine. And the doctor will not agree to fix your spine, if you damage it. I have bought the Tshirt for this.

Paul

Many thanks for all the input on this :-)

I have a Ryobi electric drill with 2 x batteries and charger. Is that a reasonable make for gardening tools or should I cut my losses and start again?

I also have Ryobi sabre saw, chain saw, chainsaw on extension pole, hedge trimmer + other diy things

I'll never buy Ryobi petrol again. Cheap, plastic carbs disintegrate before your eyes - and no support whatever from Ryobi if you are one day over their pathetic warranty.

And are you a happy customer?

Did you get a mortgage and buy a high capacity battery?

I have tended to get batteries from ebay suppliers - which seem to work very well. I started with Ryobi in the NiCad days and had a lout of tools so I just converted to their current battery technology (Lithium).

And yes, I'm as happy as I could be,

Ryobi is 'cheap', in that they sell the tools at bargain prices at Home Depot in the US. We get the same tools but without the bargain prices. (although sometimes we get versions they don't and vv)

This makes me think they aren't good value, because if they can sell them profitably in the US at half the price they can't have invested very much in raw materials.

But I only have one Ryobi tool I've barely used so can't comment on their garden tools.

Theo

Sadly I would second that... my limited experience with two Ryobi petrol power heads was very poor. The first 2 stroke, seemed to ingest a part of its own carb after a few months. The impulse purchase of a 4 stroke replacement (it was very cheap!), did not turn out much better. It was temperamental, would not run reliably at some angles, and slowly drifted out of tune. It was impossible to keep running due to critical wear parts made out of plastic! I felt a wave of relief come over me the day I lobbed it in a skip!

I have not tried their battery tools - they are probably better than the petrol ones.

Probably depends a bit on how many tools you plan to add, budget and various other factors like the level of performance you seek. My electric garden tools are all Makita - but that was a choice influenced primarily by already being invested in the platform, and secondly because they have such a vast range of 18V tools. (probably only rivalled by Milwaukee[1])

You can run battery adaptors to power other brand tools on the batts you have, although that may not always work as smoothly as the OEM batts.

Do you have a recommendation for a make that you are happy with? I only have 1 x Ryobi (an electric drill) so now would be the time to move to something better!