Out here in the boondocks, all it takes is a couple of days’ sunshine and we’re assailed with massed lawnmowers, whippersnippers, and hedge trimmers roaring, revving and farting in glorious surround sound. Of course, the Corner Cottage versions of these tools are all electric — if all of Braidwood went the same way, we’d reach net-zero carbon emissions well before the 2050 deadline.
The thing is, the same impulse has galvanised us too, and our suite of battery-powered implements has been put to use with gusto. Today, having given the lawn an attractive No.2 trim, reduced several large bushes to vaguely spherical shapes, and massaged the front hedge into a more-or-less uniform height, I turned my attention to what I have taken to calling, in the manner of The Fast Show’s Ted, the Lower Field.
This strip of real estate has posed a bit of a challenge to us: between it and the house is a huge, overbearing pine tree which dominates the garden and gets in the way of our grandiose landscaping plans. In addition, the Lower Field lies a half-metre lower than what I shall call the Upper Garden, giving it an out-of-sight-out-of-mind status most of the time.
As a result, it has recently become a savage no-man’s-land, overgrown with tall grass, enormous fleshy thistles, and other uninvited flora. I wouldn’t mind, necessarily, as it does provide a nice, welcoming environment for butterflies and the like, but by the same token, things like snakes would also find it appealing. And that’s a no-no — so this wilderness had to go.
And that brings us (eventually) to the point of this story. What battery-powered implement would be appropriate for the job? Why, that whipper-snipper (as they’re called in Aus), the weed-whacker, the strimmer. The motorised scythe that reduces all undesirable vegetation effortlessly to so much chaff in the wind.
Or does it . . .?
Without going into too much detail, our version of this tool uses tough nylon line whirling at many thousands of rpm to slash the recalcitrant herbage into submission. And this stuff doesn’t last forever: in fact at full steam it lasts about ten minutes. Then, according to the design of the tool, you have to whack the spinning hub on the ground and centrifugal force will miraculously draw forth two fresh lengths of line, thus to continue flailing without pause.
All well and good. But when this facility runs out, you have to re-stock it. And this is where the problem arises. Now you find yourself in one of those death spirals of frustration, tinkering, cursing, despair, bargaining and rage that anyone who fancies themselves as a bit handy without any real skill will be familiar with.
In short: the recommended method will not work. Take my word for it — it does not do what the manual says it does; it will not respond as countless YouTube videos guarantee it will. At minimum you need a three hands to accomplish what the designers in their wisdom have decreed must happen.
Thus we find ourselves in what everyone will recognise as a dad-rage: impotently muttering, “argh . . . you, argh! . . . bloody mmmgghhh! Why . . .? Bastard!” And seized by the overwhelming desire to cast the offending gizmo violently into the very tall grass it should by rights be levelling in a smooth, environmentally-friendly manner.
At times like these, it is beneficial to recall the words of Tennyson’s Ulysses:
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
That final emphasis is mine. Confronted with these intractable issues, it is my sad burden that I assume a mulish posture, despite the roiling frustrations within, and keep trying. Thus it was that time and again I advanced into the jungle, implement awhirl, only to find my painstakingly loaded lines truncated within seconds, or even worse, flying out of their native sockets never to be seen again.
Eventually two conclusions dawned: one, that the supplied replacement line was just too flimsy for the thick and wiry undergrowth; and two, that the cleverly designed hub mechanism was too fiddly and complicated for the task at hand. Google revealed the sad tales of numerous users of the same tool encountering the same issues; and while more agricultural models seem to offer robust alternatives, our amateur model is stuck with various versions of the hub-and-line arrangement.
Where I come from, the Afrikaner people have a saying: “‘n boer maak ‘n plan” — simply put, “a farmer makes a plan,” but so much more than that. Not only does ‘boer’ mean a lot more than a farmer, going to the heart of a people’s nationalistic identity, but also, the ‘plan’ part is really about finding a way, drawing on your practical resources and ingenuity to find a solution where none previously existed.
Isn’t it lovely when your very best plan-maaking actually produces results? And when two obsessions collide to do so, it’s even better. So it was today, when examining the replacement line I had recently purchased, I recalled a conversation with the salesperson. “This one is really tough,” he said. “It’s reinforced with carbon fibre.”
“Carbon fibre, eh?” I replied. “Everything’s better with carbon fibre.”
“Wha?” he responded, quick as a flash.
“Erhm . . . I’m a cyclist,” I said lamely, watching his expression close up with prejudice. “Carbon fibre frames are supposed to be better, but I still like steel ones.”
In a flash of inspiration, I recalled the meticulously hoarded stash of bits of stainless steel brake and gear cables among my extensive collection of bike-related nuts, bolts, shims, knobs, washers and springs — all accumulated over years of tinkering with and building various shapes and sizes of bicycles. (I’ve built six now, thanks for asking.)
I had long wondered what could be done with these bits of cable: it seemed wasteful to discard them — they’re stainless steel, strong but flexible, incorruptible. Too short to re-use on a build, but too long to cast guilt-free into the bin. I once tried using one to bind a dangerously leaning rosebush to a fence pole, but it was too harsh, cutting mercilessly into the plant’s stem.
I even planned a post in the chatroom of a global community of like-minded bike spods I frequent, asking for ideas for repurposing these bits of stuff (and I’m not ruling that post out, by the way).
It was the work of a moment to retrieve these offcuts. Initial signs were positive. The cable was certainly stronger than the carbon fibre-reinforced stuff I’d been using — but how to ensure it wouldn’t fly out of the hub under the inescapable force of the centrifuge?
Well, a partial solution lies in the form of the knarp. This is a word — a very valid word, acceptable in Scrabble, which means a cable-stopper or cable-end. And on bicycle cables, these are affixed permanently and immutably as if in the very fires of Mordor themselves.
Gear cables, which are a little thinner, have their own style of knarp; brake cables are thicker (which is good from a safety perspective, no?) and have bigger knarps. I won’t go into the difference between Shimano knarps and Campagnolo knarps here — let’s save that treat for another day, OK?
Experiment #1 involved using two bits of fat brake cable with their reassuringly large knarps. These fed through the designated holes in the hub with ease — and I could trim them nicely with the Shimano clipper dedicated to that task.
It worked! You can tell when the whippersnipper has a full-length line aboard as it emits a full-throated whirr as these lengths cleave the air at speed. And boy, did that tightly woven stainless steel cut through the vegetation with a vengeance! Within minutes we’d laid waste to a good few square metres’ grass; we also took down some five-foot thistles, whose meaty inch-thick stems disintegrated in a satisfying wet blur of sappy pulp.
But of course, this kind of treatment is hard on even the toughest material, and before long my cables had frayed and then given way and the implement’s deep, menacing note was replaced with the high whine of a cable-free hub. Back to the spares pile it was, and no more knarps to be seen.
Experiment #2: I tried feeding the knarpless bits of cable into the hub according the the manufacturer’s design, but as soon as I deployed the ‘on’ button, they flew out, never to be seen again — at least by me. I can only hope that the kiddies at the local playground remained unscarred by stainless-steel cables coming at them at close to the speed of sound. So far so good!
Finally, after some fiddling, I found that doubling the cable around the hub and threading it over and under itself (awkward description but you get what I mean), enabled it to stay put for long enough to wreak destruction for another ten minutes or so before the cable frayed itself apart.
Job’s a good ‘un, as they say. The Lower Field was trimmed to an acceptable height, the whippersnipper was saved from being launched into the stratosphere through sheer frustration, and those awkward cable-bits had been upcycled to a useful end.
And, of course, all this make-and-mend became the subject of a very long, self-satisfied piece of content for your delectation. Everyone’s a winner! Stay tuned for more homespun tales of triumph against the odds!
