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Bosch AHS 48 Lithium Ion Cordless Hedgecutter
by thedevilinme
Behind loud noise, boundaries and hedge disputes keep the council and police busy the most when it comes to neighbour disputes in England. For some reason any accidental infringement involving growth crossing invisible lines can send the nimbi's loopy. Recently a man was murdered because he refused to remove a small privet hedge that was ... three inches over on to his neighbours drive. People work all their lives to buy their own place and they are not in the mood to concede any of it. Its usually pompous men that once had good jobs and are now retired that take issue the most, enjoying being empowered by complaining and campaigning about things so to be relevant and express that lost authority now they are stuck at home with nothing to do.
Leylandii trees are the beasts that cause most of the rows, a permanent eclipse of the sun for some, and not cheap to get a lumberjack in to knock them down, up to a grand in some parts. Luckily our current neighbours are young and laidback on one side and old and needy on the other and so need for upset. If you do want to kill your neighbours Leylandii or offending shrubbery by the way then just whack a few copper nails in about two inches deep at the base and one month later it will fall over - probably on their house. Anti-social Brits by a mind-boggling 400,000 of these shrubs a year.
We don't have a Leylandii issue but we do have a rather large garden that has trees and shrubbery quickly taking over in the spring and so trimming equipment required and regularly updated. Gardens are like women and if you don't keep on top of the topiary then become undesirable. The couple next door are young professionals and so buy all the latest garden machinery to keep their patch clean and if something noisy can be deployed to do the simplest of jobs then they will have purchased it, their latest gadget being a soil rotorvator! But we have a long rich green hedge that separates our gardens and like all good bushes it needs a good trim. We politely never used to cut the whole hedge top to risk not offending them when they first moved in and so it had a half Mohican if you like and looked rather silly. I would sweep the trimmer along but had to stop half-way in, which really used to annoy me, half finished jobs always a cause for irritation for me. But they are cool with it and now I can really get stuck in and give it a buzz cut, flat enough to putt snooker balls on.
Now that the old hedge cutter has given up and the band mechanism inside rusted some it was time for a replacement, the Bosch AHS. It's a cordless baby and so flexibility the appeal and get can right into the job, the lower part of the hedge often tricky to get at with flex jobbies as you tangle or risk cutting through your power supply, quite a few extension leads needed in the old days. You also risked falling over the cable when you sheared through a wasp nest. Admittedly I attack the hedge more like Leatherface than Edward Scissorhands although I am contemplating some hedge sculptures next year. I suspect a peacock is beyond me although I can't rule out a Lock Ness Monster. In fact if I tried to do any sculpture it would end up the Loch Ness Monster.
It's a gnarly old hedge in places and so this type of tighter tooth blade the Bocsh is equipped with enables you to hack off nearer the root and so not just a leaf cutter. But this baby really came into its best when applied to a rather large Holly tree we have that is pretty difficult to trim because of the spikes, spikes always the biggest irritant in any garden. Because it was cordless I could thrust that baby in there and attack from the guts outwards, Yellow Finches and Wood Pigeons flying everywhere!
-Product Features from the Amazon site-
* Powerful 18V Lithium-ion battery
* 48cm blade length with 15mm tooth spacing
* Laser cut, diamond ground blades for vibration free sharp clean cutting
* Patented 'Power Tech' blade system (anti-stall system), reverses blade action
* Lightweight ergonomic design with soft-grip handle, dual handed safety switching
The lithium bit is the battery, which recharges from the mains in the downtime. The blade has big noisy gnashers like Janet Street Porter and decent power to massacre a hedge like an Apache helicopter. It's not that heavy (two bags of sugar) so you could use it one-handed if you needed to thrust it in a hole or a tricky spot (man job only). As I said, no cord means no risk of cutting into cable, of course. The anti-blocking system is pretty useful and helps you free the blade when you snag those chunky branches and brambles by reversing the blade, diamonded tipped no less according to Amazon. Sadly you only get around an hour from the battery and so a long hedge jobs needing a recharge. They say it will recharge in four hours but I'm two beers in by then. You can buy add-ons for the blade it if you are that way inclined.
-Battery info from the Amazon website-
* No self-discharge: Lithium-ion batteries retain their charge whilst stored (in cool, dry conditions), so the hedgecutter is ready to use--even if it hasn't been used in a while
* A compact and lightweight tool: The AHS 48 LI's Lithium-ion battery is 50% lighter than conventional batteries, but with all the power, making the hedgecutter lighter in turn.
* No memory effect: Lithium-ion batteries retain their full charge capacity and can be re-charged up to 4 times more than standard batteries
* Fast charging: Say goodbye to 24 hour charge times--the AHS 48 LI's Lithium-ion battery is fully charged in 3 hours.
Although it feels flimsy sometimes when the blade is working hard I have had no problems with mine so far. The battery is the heaviest part and so hard on the forearms holding this for that hours battery use. It's safe to use and not too noisy and stacks away nicely in the garage. Cost wise it's around $100 (my keyboard pound sign doesn't work) new and about the retail norm according to Amazon. You can buy them in all good hardware stores although it is well priced on Amazon, where I got mine using my valuedopinions.com survey rewards. I suspect there are equivalent models that are cheaper but this did the job so why shop around?
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Bosch Art 23 Easytrim
by jo1976
I'm not a keen gardener, by any stretch of the imagination, but do try to keep the sizable lawns at the rear of our house looking reasonably trim and tidy. The problem I have is that our back garden is split level, meaning there are effectively two separate lawns to tackle, with the top section being quite a long distance from the house. ... There is also wooden fencing around most of the garden, with some stonework around the sides at the bottom stretch of lawn. This layout means that our electric lawn mower can't mow particularly close to the edge of either stretch of lawn, which results in scruffy-looking long stretches of uncut grass all around the sides. Due to the split level and the distance from one end of the lawn to our kitchen, the only really safe and practical option to tackle these patches is to use a cordless trimmer - the Bosch ART 23 'Easytrim'- to avoid having a lengthy and potentially dangerous power cable trailing behind.
The Easytrim lives up to its name, being incredibly straightforward to set up, use safely and manoeuvre around the sides of the lawn without difficulty. This is quite a slim handheld tool, simply needing the handle to be slotted securely into position when first purchased. This is a once only operation, so can't be taken apart once it has been fitted, but the unit is slim enough to be stored easily between uses. I particular like how the handle is shaped, making it possible to hang this over a long nail in the side of the shed. This keeps the trimmer out of harm's way when not needed but it is always readily accessible.
The only disadvantage to this as a cordless model is that a certain amount of pre-planning is required to think ahead and charge up the battery before use. Given the size of our garden and the area which needs to be strimmed, we need to have the battery fully charged to provide enough power to finish the job in one. A full charge takes several hours, so this isn't a tool that can just be picked up and used on a whim whenever the sun shines. I tend to charge this up overnight, whenever I think the weather is going to be nice enough to get out and do the lawns the following day. This can be a bit hit and miss though and does mean that sometimes the battery ends up being left on charge for long periods and not actually used, which isn't ideal. The battery does hold a little bit of residual power between uses, however, and can manage around five minutes or so of cutting time without compromising its power, even if it hasn't been properly charged before use, but this isn't really sufficient for our needs. When fully charged, the trimmer offers up to an hour's worth of cutting time, at a rough estimate.
Charging the battery is pretty straightforward as the battery itself can be removed from the handle and comes supplied with its own charging unit that plugs into a mains socket. The charging unit has a green LED light which offers the reassurance of knowing that the battery is being charged correctly, although I do think it would be useful if the light changed colour to indicate when the battery was fully charged, or had some other way of indicating that it was ready for use. Once charged, the battery simply slots into position on the underside of the handle and is removed by squeezing the buttons on the side. There is only one way to insert the battery so there is no need to worry about whether it is in the correct place.
The trimming/cutting mechanism works using individual small plastic 'blades', rather than a spool of wire that some models use. I much prefer this system as there is no need to thread or feed any wire through either between or during uses. Here, the only assembly required is to attach the plastic blade which just sits in position on the underside of the trimmer. My husband tends to replace the blades before each use, as the plastic does wear away slightly due to the friction caused by cutting through grass and weeds. The replacement blades come in packs of 20 and are available from most DIY and garden centres for around £5 or £6 per pack. I personally don't bother replacing them when I use the trimmer, unless the plastic is actually broken, as I find that the trimmer performs well enough without needing to change them every time. The blades don't stand up very well to contact with harder surfaces such as the stonework around some of our lawn and can occasionally break during use. This isn't as annoying as it might sound, as the handle has a small 'notch' providing a convenient spot to store spare blades so they are always ready to hand. The old blade usually comes away by itself if it has broken and the new one just clips into position without any trouble.
The trimmer is surprisingly lightweight and comfortable to hold during use, whilst managing to avoid being too flimsy feeling. The base of the trimmer is surrounded with a shaped hard plastic shield which I think is designed to stop any sharp objects being flirted up during cutting. The trimming motion is operated by a gentle squeeze of a single button which is logically and comfortably positioned. There is also another handle further down, which is handy if you need to lift the trimmer up to reach a particular area. Even after prolonged use the handle doesn't get uncomfortably hot and the whole unit is thick and sturdy enough to stop the potentially unpleasant sensation of any vibrations, even when the blade is cutting. I find this perfectly powerful enough to neatly cut through the edges of overgrown grass, leaving a short tidy surface behind, and I also use it to attack patches of large nettles that tend to grow around the back of my shed. I haven't used it for any thicker items and don't think that it would be strong enough to cut through branches, for example, but it does tackle greenery very well.
We've owned this particular model for a number of years now, without experiencing any difficulties or problems with mechanical or electrical failure. The battery itself is still functioning well, managing to retain its charge efficiently and shows no sign of needing replacing as yet, despite around four or five years of use.
Our cordless model was originally purchased from the now defunct Focus store but it is still available from garden centres and DIY stockists, although this should not be confused with a corded version which, rather confusingly, sports the same model number. The cordless version can currently be ordered online from Amazon for around the £40 mark (September 2011) which I think is a bargain for a good quality product that is still going strong after several years of regular use.
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Challenge Hedge Trimmer
by totallyextreme
Intro
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As you will know if you are a regular follower of some of my reviews, I do spend a fair proportion of my weekend out in the garden doing the odd chore for the parents. Last week, the hedge had become so overgrown it was actually contributing largely to the shade in our garden, something no one wants particularly in ... these summers, as they are already short enough. Thus, i broke out our hedge trimmer, and fount it to be this Challenge version, so decided quickly that a review on Dooyoo was in order, to fully consider the experience.
The Challenge Trimmer
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First of all, what does it look like? It is dark blue with some yellow accents, but lets face it, you never buy this product to look at. It is not going to take pride of place on your mantlepiece. Anyway, it is corded, which means it must be plugged in not too far away from your hedge and has a 54cm blade, which obviously is just over half a metre, which should be enough to tackle even the meatiest of hedges. It doesn't weigh a great deal, but would be uncomfortable holding it after a short while, so it isn't exactly the lightest product in the world either. In addition, it does have a safety cut out button, which i think is quite standard on these products, and should be, as, in the wrong hands, they could be fairly dangerous, and injury should never occur!
Once going, it is quite noisy, you won't be popular if you start doing this at 7am on a sunday morning for example, unless you have a great deal of land to yourselves. The company states that this should be used on medium growth edges, and while i have absolutely no idea what a hedge with medium growth constitutes, it tackles ours perfectly suitably. I do not believe our hedges are much different to anyone elses, and so would be confident in recommending it to somebody to take on their own personal hedge, without any issues.
The fact that it is corded can be a bit of a pain. The cord is very long, which is obviously good, but it can get in the way a bit and obviously you are always conscious of where the cord is and trying not to cut through it. However, i am not too sure how this could be avoided, so it is probably a problem with the whole range, rather than just blaming this exact model. Obviously cordless models are available, but they require charging which can be a pain and you look a bit of a fool if you are only able to attack half your hedge because your battery expired.
Pricewise
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These are available in all good hardware shops around the £35 mark, however, i believe, as always, a better deal can be found on the net, so it is worth looking around and perhaps aiming more towards the £25 area; that would be great value.
Summary
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A very good product that does the job. The cord is irritating but essential i think.
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