How to Use a Weed Eater

hey kids nice to see you again uh so today it's tool tuesday so um i'm gonna show you how to use a weed eater uh you know i um i showed you how to use a lawnmower recently and a weedeater is kind of a nice luxury to have uh so if you're uh yeah if you're able to you want to get the lawn mower first but then if you can step up and get a weed eater it's nice to get around the fence and around the trees and that sort of thing before i walk you through that though i do have a dad joke for you so uh how does a cow cut its grass with a lawn mower so anyway you know there's all kinds of different weed eaters you can get a gas powered one i actually used to have a gas powered one and then it uh it would have cost more to fix it than to uh to go ahead and just buy a new one and they've gotten so much better the battery powered ones now um it you know it was actually wasn't that hard to start over the years it worked pretty well but i thought i'd just go ahead and get a battery powered one just because they're they're better now i've also had an electric one too and that works well but then you're limited by the cord right so um and each manufacturer is a little bit different in how you've you respool them with the line uh so i have i actually have three weed eaters i have my craftsman um that i was given at during the lowe's giveaway give where they gifted me a whole bunch of tools so i have that and then that battery actually works in the lawnmower i when i showed you the lawnmower you can use the push start um so that works also in this than this weed eater and then i have a ryobi that i bought before that how do i went viral and it's been a good weed eater and then i got um heart actually gifted me a weed eater too and like i mentioned in the uh video on the lawnmower i just didn't have any history with the battery so it didn't feel like right recommending it but it is a great tool too just like that lawnmower has been a great tool so far um you know so maybe i can endorse that um in in a year or two when i feel good about it so um so anyway i'm just going to walk you through all that you'll get to see in this video too so i had cnbc come to my house uh you know last month and did some video recording and we did one where we did do some footage on a weed eater so you'll notice a little small camera on my weed eater on a little bit of the footage because i thought it'd just be fun to throw that in uh to use that for this video so anyway so i'll just walk you through each one and show you how it works i'm just going to show you how to use the the ryobi uh weed eater actually in action and then also the the craftsman because the ryobi is basically the same as the heart i i will show you how to change the um the here's my dogs uh show you how to change the actual line in both of them just so you can see them but they're very similar they're practically the same uh way to do it and but the craftsman is a little bit different so i'll show you that as well okay let's get started okay so one thing you're going to need to pay attention to is the thickness of the line that you're putting in it the it says right on the weed eater so you just might have to look for it on a small label it'll tell you the size of the line and you see this it says 0.065 okay 0.065 so that's what we're using for the craftsman the um ryobi and the heart use one that's a little thicker it's a point zero eight zero okay see that right there and it says it right on on both of them just gotta look for it on the label so we're gonna start off with the craftsman and we're going to use the .065 i'll show you how to do that right now okay so this is the craftsman and this is how it works you just have these buttons on each side see that button right there and then there's one on the other side you just push that you just push those in like that okay and then you got a spring here that seems like it's attached just be careful so that doesn't pop off because you'll need that to hold it in okay and then this just comes out of here just like this okay and it actually has an arrow on it i don't know if you can see that see that arrow it's pointing that way so basically all you're going to do is you're going to take your line and you're going to take it like this and you're going to wedge it in here okay just a little bit and wedge it like that okay then all you're going to do is just wrap it and you want to kind of wrap this fairly loosely because if you don't when you when that when it's feeding it'll get stuck if you've wrapped it too tight right you want to make sure that the line is able to come back off of there once when you need it to feed out okay so all you're doing is this okay and make sure that you don't get something tucked down in there i mean it's not that big a deal you can just come back and pop this off and then pull it out and fix it but rather not if you can help it try to kind of just go back and forth okay i get this fairly full just so i don't have to do it very often but and i think you can actually buy these spools too so that that way if you're in the middle of weed eating you can you can just pop in the new spool you don't have to stop and do this okay so that looks about good i'm just going to leave it like that and i'm just going to snip some off with my side cutters okay okay and then you have this hole here see that hole so you just got to feed that in there through that hole like that and then you make sure it's not tucked underneath but okay like that there we go okay and then you just put this on find find where your holes are where those buttons fit into and you pop it on okay and you're good to go and the way these work every one of them just works by bouncing it when you're out there if this line um you know over time it's it gets whittled down here just by cutting then you just bounce it against the ground and it feeds out more for you and then it uses this little blade over this little piece of metal it's not really that sharp it's i'd consider it a blade but you you know it's not it's not super sharp but when it's going fast enough it'll splice it right off of there so okay all right so here's how this one works you got to make sure these holes are lined up okay i'm going to show you another one my heart eaters very similar to this uh and actually use the same tool for it um so you got to get these lined up okay and so that the because there's holes on each side right there's a hole on each side of this and so you just make sure those are lined up so that you can actually see through it i'm gonna just double check that yep i can see daylight on the other side okay and then now i take this pre-cut one here this is pre-cut ryobi sells these uh they're a little more expensive to do it this way i think it's better to just buy in bulk but i thought i'd just show you this it's a pre-cut 16 foot okay so then now we're just going to feed this through here might have to play around with it to get it to come all the way through hopefully this doesn't take me too long here okay this just goes to show you that you have to play with it sometimes there we go see now it's coming through the other side so now we just pull these out equidistant okay doesn't have to be perfect just so it's close and then you just put this tool on like this and you just turn it clockwise okay gotta play around with it for a little bit here especially at the beginning once it gets starts getting wound up it's not such a big deal but and if you don't have that tool you know you can twist this by hand just the tool just makes it easier okay we're getting close okay one's a little bit longer but that's okay that'll just it'll just snip off when we when we turn it on and we bounce it and then it'll snip it off here all right so for the heart it's very similar to the ryobi it uses the same same string 0.08 right so you want to make sure you put the right string in um and so you get those pre-cut strings right and they're about 16 feet so if you don't have the pre-cut strings it's usually cheaper just to get it in a bulk package like this and then you can just cut them yourself and so what i'll do is i'll just take a bunch out and i'm a little over six feet tall okay so i'll take it and i'll just i mean you could measure this if you wanted to but i just kind of get a rough idea of what that's going to look like let's see that's about 14 right there so i'll just snip it there that'll be 14. and i just use a side cutters this is an old side cutters that i have okay this is a great tool to have i'll show that in a future video and side cutters i got several different kinds of these but i use them for all kinds of different things so anyway so we just cut that and now i'll show a close-up of um how to feed this one okay so here's how you feed this you you have to make sure these arrows are pointing at the holes right you have the hole on each side you have a hole here right and then you have a hole on the other side okay and you have to make sure these are lined up like that if this is if this is like this it's not going to work you got to make sure those are lined up okay and then now you can see straight through there you can see straight through that hole if this was off like this you wouldn't be able to see through okay because you got to do that to feed it okay so now we're just going to take this take one end of our string that we just cut and we're just going to feed it through i have to play around with it a little bit oh i had it and then i let it go there we go okay see that so now it's coming through both sides okay just like that and now we just get it to where it's equal equal distance on both sides okay okay almost there okay all right so they're equal out here i'm not going to change the camera angle to show you that but trust me they're equal all the way out okay so now all you need to do is you have a tool um i just got to find that tool i'll be right back [Music] you have this tool right here okay and just like the ryobi same thing you just basically put that on here okay and then you just twist twist clockwise okay just make sure these don't get tangled you just twist you have to monkey with it a little bit but once you get going okay see it's slowly taking all that up and i just keep my finger kind of on both sides to guide it to make sure that there's no knots there okay shouldn't be but okay we're getting close okay that's there this one's a little bit stubby but that'll work itself out once they once you bounce this and feed the line these will end up being even this one's a little bit longer this one's a little bit shorter but that's okay once you start it up and bounce it it'll feed it out and then this is the trimmer this part right here this blade will trim it off so all right that's how you do that one all right so first i'm going to show you the craftsman this is the craftsman here okay and the battery has a uh indicator on the end you just push that to show whether it's charged or not okay and then it just goes here slips in this particular battery actually is the same battery for that craftsman mower for the push start mower okay so you're good there this one has a a high and low i normally just keep it on high and then it has a safety button here okay and you you do that to get it to start you gotta push that safety in to start it okay so now let me just show you this it has one string that comes out okay and i'll show you how to how to change this this one has a guard on it too to protect your fence or to protect your trees if you you know if you're weed eating around the tree or your fence and without this guard you can do damage to both you can do damage to your your fence and then um also uh so you just got to be careful if you don't have that guard my other two do not have a guard uh but anyway so that's how what that's for to guard against this thing coming out too far and destroying things okay and if you do it around a tree and you rip apart that bark it will do damage to your to your tree it's not good for your tree so anyway so that's pretty much what that does and then this has that blade here to be able to um cut it off once so could you you bounce this against the grass to get the line to feed out it feeds out and then it swings around and then it hits this to to cut off so so that's how that one works that's pretty much all there is to it i don't think there's anything else to to tell you so okay okay now i'll show you my heart here's the heart um one and uh you'll be able to see that this one does not have the guard on it right so when you're around a tree or a fence you got to be careful it doesn't have that spacer on it for you one thing nice about this particular tool is actually you can attach different tools to it it's meant to if you have this base here you can attach different tools to it besides a weed eater um and it's pretty powerful it's a 40 volt compared to that other one i think was a it's an either an 18 volt or a 20 volt um that craftsman okay and then so the way this one works is you just slide slide it in the back here a little awkward there okay so it's just going to slide in so now it's snapping in this one also has a gauge on it here you can see if the battery's charged okay which is kind of a nice feature in case you're wondering and then this one has a safety this is the safety here you got to push that in before this will even work you can't push this down the trigger down without it so you just push it okay so that's how that one works and this one also has the two strings right coming out each side okay okay and here's the ryobi very similar to the heart it's a 40 volts as well it has the battery indicator on the back which is always nice and it's a multi-tool too you can attach different tools here with this you just undo that and then they make a variety of tools that are run with this base right here the safety on this one is is this you have to push that down for this to work you can't it won't work if you don't so you just press that down i just replaced the line so one of the lines was a little bit longer that's why that was so noisy it was trimming it off because the line was line was a little bit long so okay so that's that same thing on this this is really similar to the heart um it just has the blade here this piece of metal that cuts it off and again it doesn't have the spacer so you just got to be careful around trees and around around your fence uh and then also um this one works with bouncing it too so you that thing just pushes in you bounce it just make sure you bounce it on the grass don't bounce that on cement because if you do over time this will get worn out and then you'll just have to replace it okay this will get beat up all right okay so when you're doing this just want to pay attention um so you can see that i have my sidewalk here right my walk way up to my not sidewalk but my walk up to my house so you can save yourself a little bit of trouble here depending on which way you we eat right if i weed this way the thing is spinning this way and it's going to kick all the grass onto here okay uh sometimes you can't avoid that but so you'll see it watch so um actually let me just walk you through this really quick too so there's a safety here okay so you have to push that down on this particular one there's actually a high and a low i just always keep it on high okay so you have to push that before this is going to work otherwise you can't even push the trigger okay so you push that there you go okay so let me just show you what happens if i go this way [Music] see that it's kicking everything onto the under the pathway here if i went the other way it'll kick it onto the grass [Music] [Music] i just did my grass not that long ago so so there's not a whole lot to trim here but i'm just kind of being able to show you uh so and then let me show you how you bump it so let me show you this too real quick i didn't show you that before so i see this right here that's actually a um a blade there it's not tube sharp you know but when this comes out when you feed this it's going to whip around it's going to hit that to trim it off so that when it bounce when when you bounce it it feeds it so it's not so long it'll just trim it for you it just happens automatically okay oh it got quiet with those guys okay we're good okay all right so i'm just going to show you how to feed it you just bump it okay did you hear that one once i fed it bumped it or it fed it out and then you could hear that it actually uh sliced it off with that little razor blade that i showed you right same thing [Applause] okay so here's my other one uh you know again more powerful um so it works a little bit different this is the the safety you gotta push that down right and then you're gonna push this and then that's how it starts um and like i said this one doesn't have it doesn't have that um spacer right so if i'm gonna use this on my fence i gotta be careful here's another tip too you got to be really careful around trees you know if you keep beating up the bark on a tree you're going to ruin your tree right so be really careful with with this one because it doesn't have that spacer and we can just go ahead so here we go we just push this down and then it fires up like that all right i hope that was helpful for you you know there's just some real basic things you just got to keep in mind um again make sure that you know you pay attention to which way you're weed eating um if you're weeding around a path just to save you some time you want the grass to you know that you're cutting to go onto the grass instead of onto the path so as long as you just do it in the right direction that'll save you some time later and then also you know when you're around a tree or you know around your fence be really careful especially with that ryobi or the heart because it doesn't have a guard um you know especially your tree you know a fence can be replaced if you cut up the bark on your tree uh it'll end up you know ruining your tree so so be careful with that um yeah just a few things to keep in mind and you know it's always nice to have maybe an extra battery on hand depending on how big your yard is because you might need to replace that and you don't want to be in the middle you know if you're of cutting your yard and then you got to go charge the battery so it's always good to have an extra one on hand but anyway i think that's basically all i wanted to do i wanted to show in this video uh you know i'm sure there's probably some more advanced videos out there but this will give you the basics and get you started so thanks for watching and god bless you