In the garden the pen is mightier than the sword

 Well it is when it comes to fixing jammed up whipper snippers...

I've written about my Ryobi Elt1100a electric whipper snipper previously and if you can find a working one lurking about online or at a garage sale cheap enough (I paid $50 for mine years ago and it was well and truly worth it) grab it. Unlike the petrol varieties this doesn't require an arm wrenching yank to get it started or pre-mixing whatsoever. Just plug and play, off you go.

Once obtained then dismantle the head and throw it in the bin because sooner or later it's going to fall apart on you. Instead use a Ryobi Pro-Cut II spool, load it up with good quality string and away you go.

Since I made this upgrade, I haven't had a single fault until this weekend just gone and that's a lot of grass, weeds and dirt it's torn through in almost two years.

This time though something seemed to block up one of the small one way tunnels you feed the line through, preventing it from worming its way through the locking section and emerging out of the exit hole on the top of the spool. I could either go down to just one bit of line cutting string doing all the work or pop it open and see if I could clear the blockage.

Big mistake. 

Whatever was blocking the tunnel seemed to have disappeared when I opened it up but I didn't realise that the two springs you find in there also are prone to escape. And in short order, both of them had flung themselves out into the air to sail somewhere into my dusty shed.

I can't find my 10mm ratcheting spanner in there on a good day, there was no way in hell I was going to find either or both of the lost springs.

Pre-escape, it looked something like this below. You feed the line in, it pushes its way past the serrated spring powered bit and goes up the ramp and out of the top. The other half of this spool holds everything down in place while the serrated bit prevents it flying out again at high speeds. 

 

Without the springs, well it looks just like this and as soon as you load it up with fresh line and let it spin, both of those bits of line come flying out of the unit like there's no tomorrow.

You don't even have to ask how I figured this bit out..

So without any springs to help push back on the fresh line and hold it in place, I had two options. Buy a new a completely new head or jury rig up a solution.

The answer came the next day when I was on my lunch break, thinking up things I could scrounge from around the house that may have a sizeable spring. A cheap toy perhaps? Wrap some high strength wire around a section of line and hope for the best?

Or buy two bucks worth of clickable pens and break one open as an experiment. I mean the spring that hopefully fit the bill was right there in plain sight. And it's only two bucks, I always run out of pens - well why not?

Just crack this open...

And retrieve the needed spring within!

It was twice as long as I needed but some quick work with the cutters and suddenly we had two the right size that fit into the Pro Cut II head perfectly. I replaced the shell very carefully, put the four screws back in and gave it a spin, literally.

All working again!

The cutting line pushes in easily enough and the new springs have enough tension in them to push back on the metal locks to hold everything in place at maximum rpms - no more line flying off into space. I made short work of the remaining grass without a hitch, everything was back as it should be.

GOOD LINE TRIMMER/WHIPPER SNIPPER LINE IS ESSENTIAL THOUGH

I've been using cheap line for a while now, the kind of stuff you find at a cheap store (ironically where I also bought the pens for this fix) and as a consequence, I spent a lot of time feeding in new line because the cheap stuff was...well awful. Which is why I decided to spend a little more this time and try out: 

Oregon Magnum Gatorline Supertwist - available at Bunnings Warehouse here in Australia or online through retailers like Amazon if you're based in the US. (Affiliate link)

Eagle eyed readers will notice I'm holding the 2.4mm (0.09inch) line here but the Pro Cut II above says it works with 2.7mm (0.106inch) sized line. Sadly my local Bunnings was clean out of the 2.7 stuff  - it must be a very common size and logic suggested there was a decent chance the 2.4 should also lock into place. I can confirm, this is the case. The slightly smaller diameter line goes in and stays where it should just fine.

After working on a few sections I can you that as long as you keep it away from uncuttable things (like solid walls, weight sets and tough toys in the long grass) this stuff goes all day and I'd only have to cut myself some fresh line to feed through when I hit something with zero give, like larges rocks or concrete. Through tall grass it's a spinning scythe of doom and works very well with the Pro Cut II head (Amazon affiliate link) coupled with the ELT1100A.

Just have a couple of clicker pens in the shed standing by though, just in case.

And just in case you need some weed killer, a long long long long long long time ago we tried making our own out of easily found household ingredients!