OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Finding and Swapping Idle Chatter Brushcutter Work

I'm doing some clearing work for a friend, she just bought a property out at Collector which has been neglected for over 40 years, and has grass up to the shoulders to prove it, as well as shrubs and blackberry bushes!

For the Job she bought A Honda powered brush cutter off ebay, with pole saw and hedge trimmer, and some 40 tooth Carbide tip blades.

So far I have been pretty bloody amazed with the machine, there has been nothing it has not been able to eat straight through, even small trees (2" stump) and knocking down the old grass has been like running it through butter!

Sadly the counterpart has died, we were running 2 machines, the Honda and my trusty old Husqvarna 25R with the same blades, but the person running the Husky was pretty new to brush cutters, and accidentally went right into a steel fence wire at full revs, hooking the blade and snapping the drive shaft!!!

I'll be able to get the Husky back up with a new drive shaft, but at the moment it will need to wait till I have the time to do so!

I do have a second Bruch cutter coming from a deal with Gizmo1993 soon though, which I'm quite excited about, and at some point in the not to distant future I will be getting one of these Honda's for my self, by far the best machine I have worked with to-date (although it could use a set of Bullhorn handles for the work we are doing)

Well, the Job has really taken off!

Were now running The Honda, Swapping between 3 Different brush cutter blades, the pole saw, pole hedge trimmer, and 2 different lines on the line head.

As well as a backpack brush cutter running the Carbide tip blades, Hedge trimmer, a 12" chainsaw, 18" Husqvarna chainsaw, Generator, sanders, drills, saws and routers, a Victa Utility, a blower, and a 3.5 metre tube blower.

The blackberries are halfway through, the fences are down at the front, one side of the house is cleared back to lawn, as is the front, half the remaining side, and half the back paddock!

it's been a heck of a task so far, the easy parts being the hip high scrub in the back paddock, ranging right up to the hardest being the 2.5 metre high blackberry mass, which contains a banksia that needs to be saved!

The tools are up against it, so far in amongst the scrub we have encountered fencing wire, bricks, bottles, corrugated roofing sheets, a park bench, a combustion stove, pots, posts, and timber panels, which have killed two of the carbide blades for the brush cutter, one of the steel blades, one line head, a guard, the drive shaft of my Husqvarna 25r brush cutter, and required regular reshaping of the hedge trimmers tines.

It's also upset the little 12" Ozito chainsaw a fair bit, nocked the chain off the pole saw and destroyed a mower blade!

but were through the thickest of it now, so hopefully there won't be too many more casualties!

Photo's of the work to come, and of the tools in use, as well as a full review of the equipment at the end.

So far I can say I have been exceptionally impressed with the Honda 4-stroke brush cutter, the Husqvarna 359 Chainsaw, and the Carbide tip brush cutter blades, as well as the 1976 Victa 2-stroke Utility (but I was already aware of how much it could take on)

The Ozito chainsaw is starting to show some problems, it's needing a lot of regular chain adjustment, and the oil feed is not working all that well, but that's not too surprising for a $120 bunnings china chainsaw, and the hedge trimmer guard tines are a little flimsy, but then again I'm taking a Chinese hedge trimmer from magnet mart (Rok Brand) and using it to take on roses and blackberries that go well over my head, and have some stems an inch thick, so it's working well above it's pay grade, and not doing too bad.

The Hedge trimmer was purposefully chosen as a Cheepie, as it is being used for a task it was not really intended for, and I expect it to take a substantial beating, hoping only that it will last till the end of the Job, knowing it was going to most likely end up sacrificial, due to the nature of the job, I would rather kill off the Cheepie than something decent, however it has been surprisingly robust in the face of it all so far!

Hi Ty,
Yeah I hired a Sthil pole saw with a 4 stroke on it, felt bloody heavy pretty quick!(@ 4mtrs.long too!) and the saw sort of gnawed through the olives (chain jamming, jumping off, gumming up, oiler $&^% poor).

I tweaked the chain etc. not sure it had the RPM for a saw. It was almost a new Virgin saw when I got it...I would be very hesitant to buy one, I think it would be back at the shop too often...

How did you find yours as a pole saw? (I assume you had interchangable heads? yeah?)

That's all good info Ty, just goes to show that the cheaper stuff can get in there and do some work too. It'll be interesting to see how the Honda lasts, I've got an older GX35 here for parts. It's got a cracked head. Apparently the earlier models were proned to cracking, between the valve and port on the exhaust side.

It's good to see the use of carbide tips too, they really hook in. I use a McCullock pro60 with a carbide tip blade from a circular saw.

The Honda has been quite good as a pole saw, only had the chain come off once, and that was my own fault for forgetting to watch the tension during the initial "Stretch In" period.

Apart from that, it's been good, helped a lot with the higher blackberry sections, and vines, and on top of that, it helped me take down a 3" tree that I could not get to easily with the chainsaw (needed to be taken out that day, but with little light left there was no time for the necessary limbing, so I poked the pole saw through, and did it that way!)

The ROK Hedge trimmer is still impressing me, it's done a good 6 hours of work now, well and truly above its paygrade, and far outside it's specs, and is still going strong, my biggest issue with it is the cut of switch, it's in a place that is easy to hit by mistake while working, apart from that there's just the soft guard tines that need reshaping here and there, which is no big fuss.

I'm growing more concerned with the Ozito chainsaw however, I think it may need some work tomorrow night to modify the tensioner, and overcome the slacking issue (quick google search reveals this as a common issue) apart form the tensioner playing up, it's running fine!

The Honda has been the star of the show so far, easiest to start, and very good on the power, combined with the carbide tip 40T blades, there's not really anything it can't get through, it's taking on the 1m+ grass as if it wasn't there, and the blackberry's are no match what so ever!

I have a spare GX35 engine I got some time ago from Redeye, which I lan to get up and running and fit to the backpack brush cutter Gizmo1993 gave me, as I find the Honda really low on vibration, which is my biggest issue with the backpack brush cutter.

Most area's of general scrub are slashed down easily with the Honda/carbide mix, then I swap to line head to get it down lower and tidier, and finally it gets a quick run over with the Utility to even things up (the line head also helps prep for the mower by exposing bricks)

The blackberry mass is being tackled with a rotating mix of the 2 chainsaws for the thick centre stems, the pole saw and pole hedge trimmer to bring down the overhead area's, the ROK hedge trimmer to bash it down to knee hight, and then the honda/carbide mix to clear it, after that, the utility gets a run over to knock the stems down to the ground before poisoning!

That whole blackberry technique sounds like making hard yards, Ty. When I had blackberries in my hobby farming days (acres of them, in total, often well above my head) I sprayed them in the growing season with a Rega copper backpack, and let them dry up and fall down on their own. Best thing was, the Garlon didn't hurt the tree ferns. That process took 5 years to just about wipe out the blackberries. If the terrain hadn't been so steep, and the whole 50-odd acres hadn't been an old-growth forest, I could have done what my flatland grazier neighbours did, and just hired a guy with a mega-spray on the back of a 4WD to blast it all in a couple of hours, instead of it taking half a dozen weekends each year. Still, there are worse ways to spend fine summer mornings than standing in a leafy glade by a creek, surrounded by tree ferns, watching the odd wombat break cover and scramble up the ridge. I wouldn't do it again, but it's nice to look back on. Unfortunately the whole place seems to have been burned up in the big Victorian bush fires a couple of years ago. Begorrah Paddy, we just got out of that paddock in time! (I can't tell the joke that is the punch line from, ethnic humour isn't PC these days.)

It's certainly a more intense way to go about it than just poisoning Grumpy, and if the option was there, then poisoning is what I would be doing, however considering the proximity of the blackberry's to the house (they make up about a third of the front yard of the house) and the need to have the land cleared in that area to bring power to the house (this one has never been hooked up)there isn't the time to wait for them to disappear, we need the who;e front yard wiped down to lawn height ASAP, which is going to be longer than hoped for since today it is raining!

I agree sometimes you just need to clear the land quickly for access or building, but I've never had any success getting rid of them permanently except by poisoning them when they are growing strongly - especially if you don't want to poison the soil itself. So, if you are going to end up with the front yard producing grass, I doubt you can do much more than slash them and wait until they get up and running in spring. Even then, you may not catch them all growing simultaneously so soon after slashing, and there will be lots of old seed laying around, so they'll keep coming back for a few years. And I'm sure you know all that.

Yes, it's not going to be a one off fix, that's for sure.

I will be applying poison once the area is cleared, which will inhibit grass for a while, but I will be watching to minimise this.

And due to the spread of many of the shoots, seed will have spread far, so it's going to be years before the blackberry's are completely gone!

I don't think there is any need to annoy the grass while you are killing the blackberries. Since the traditional poison (2,4D) was removed from the market about 30 years ago there have been three common treatments for them: Garlon 600, BrushOff, and Roundup. Roundup (glyphosate) needs to be used in double strength and in my experience is still a marginal performer in this job. The main distinction between the three aside from that, is that Garlon 600 is a specific poison for vine-type ("woody weeds") plants while BrushOff and glyphosate are both broad-spectrum and kill just about everything. None of them allegedly poisons the soil, just the plants. Hence if you wait for green shoots and rapid growth, then apply Garlon, you should be able to continue to grow and develop the surrounding plants. That's the way it worked for me anyway.

In case you care, none of them works quite as well as 2,4D and all cost at least 10 times as much. However I did have to shower and wash my clothes after having the 2,4D running down my back for a couple of hours (same active ingredient as 2,4,5T, and a known cause of dermatitis) while I found much less discomfort with the modern ones.

When I lived in tassied 12 years ago, we had a big problem with blackberries. every bushland you saw was swamped with them, and my mothers paddocks were thick of them over meter high for up to 20 acres at a time. Due to different places and circumstances, we ended up using a lot of diesel and burning them out. fences and all.

In a couple of areas once we had cleared we found a couple of old cars and a cletrack tractor (a morriss or some sort, a "standard", and a vintage ford of some sort (big wagon thing, from memory) the morriss and standard were buggered before they got burned, but the old ford remained more or less unscathed, we sold it, and the people that bought it managed to start it up and drive it onto a trailor, since has been fully restored and was seen around hobard quite often, the tractor survived as well and we actually used that for a while.

Sadly I doubt we will find anything as cool in these blackberry's!!

Here's the team:

And an update, I have just purchased another Husqvarna 25r Brush cutter from eBay, which will be donating it's shaft, throttle controls, bullhorns and gearbox to bring my one back to life!

And the spare set of bullhorns may be fitted to the Honda to make it a little easier on the wrists!

So that will add another machine to the list!

After the weekend, and this afternoon I have some more to add to my reviews of some of the machines.

The Husqvarna 359 Chainsaw has settled well into it's new piston, and is firing up easily now, and giving good power, it will need a good sharpen, and possibly a new chain at some point, but it's handling the blackberry and rose masses very well.

The Honda is still going strong, personally I would love to get a second brush cutter attachment though, as the guard does get in the way of brush cutting but is very much needed with the line head, so downtime is annoying when swapping heads!

The Revolution backpack brush cutter is very powerful, as as I can leave it just for the blades, I have the guard off, making it much faster, it also hits higher revs, which speeds things up, however the head jams up easily, as it lacks the torque to fight through grass wraps. It also can be quite uncomfortable due to the vibration at mid revs, which is why I will eventually swap it out for the spare Honda 4-stroke engine. On top of that the exhaust is pointed at the operator, so you do get a little gassed in still air.

The Rok Hedge trimmer is still showing it can work well above it's pay grade, and is surprisingly good at tasks outside its intention, knocking down masses of rose and blackberry with ease! However I am still finding myself irritated by how easily it can be switched off accidentally due to the position of the switch, it's not hard to start it, then kill it straight away just picking it up!

The GMC generator has died, I have a feeling it may have swallowed some dust at some point, and has a blocked jet, it's a temprimental little one, and takes alot of choke fiddling to warm up, however once it's going it's gennerally quite good provided you use something above 150W and of corse below 850W, if you use something on it with low wattage (such as the 55W Black and Decker 'Mouse' Sander) the mechanical governing system struggles to register it. Once I have it back online, I will report back.

We also have a new generator coming, as the power needs during the renovation will exceed the 850W limit we currently have. We have purchased an 8KW 3 outlet Ducar generator with a 15HP 4-stroke engine, Digital throttle control, AVR, and wireless remote on-board key starting. which should hopefully keep not only the renovation on track, but also keep the caravan supplied and warm.

The Ducar is not the most High end of generators, but it does have generally favourable reviews, and should meet the needs of the renovation, as it will need to do a few months regular weekend and afternoon work, then only occasional work after that. and it has features that will be important, allowing multiple tools to go at once, having enough power to run a heater in the caravan, being key start so that Elly can start it when I'm not there, and the remote start saves getting out of the caravan to turn it off when it's time to sleep, which is really good considering the miserable weather we keep getting! Not to mention you can start it from inside the caravan fast when needed, and that's not too bad for about $650.

The generator selection problem is an interesting one, Ty. I once had the reverse of your problem: I needed a high output generator, but I needed it for long term occasional use, and would always be starting it myself, so the best choice was very different (8 kVA set with 2 cyl, 1,250 cc Lister diesel, running at 1,500 rpm instead of the 3,000 rpm petrol generators run at, so it would last forever, and more or less had before I bought it). Lister also had an autostart model, which fired up automatically whenever you applied a load to it, but I think a radio control is a neater answer in your situation. Having the generator start and stop every time the refrigerator kicks in and out would be a bit of a pain at night, I think. If you have a demand pump supplying water, that could be much the same issue if someone flushed the toilet during the night.

Because you only need it for months rather than permanently, a 3,000 rpm petrol engine seems like a better concept. Compared with diesels, petrol engines are usually easier to cold-start in cold weather, and don't glaze their bores when running at light loads. (I used a giant battery bank and inverter to back up the Lister, so I wouldn't need to run it if I needed less than 1,200 Watts. Battery bank was trickle charged by solar panels, and recharged by a 3 kW battery charger driven by the Lister. It took something like 17 hours to do a recharge.) The main "acid test" of a generator for my application was being able to just strike an arc any time with the allegedly-220-Amp stick-welder set for maximum current, and know there would be no delay or noticeable weak start to the arc, just a dull bellow from the diesel as it came up to load in what seemed like a lot less than a second. If you are going to be doing much welding using the generator you might need to check its performance first: a guy I knew who used a petrol generator could only arc weld if he had a second operator to manually slam the governor link to full throttle just before he struck the arc. That would be no use to me, since I never have a second operator and tend to start and stop the arc very frequently on the kind of welding jobs I do.

It would be interesting to get some feedback occasionally on how your generator performs: what limitations you find in living with it.

I'm not sure too many limitations will come about from this generator, I have been careful to select one that is rated and designed for a much heavier task.

For the next 3-5 months, the average weekday for this generator will be starting around 8 to power lights, a heater, kettle and toaster in the caravan, being back off by 9. (Fridge and cooktop are gas)

Then It will kick back in up at the house and be used to run 1 - 3 power tools, each ranging from 55W - 1800W (Sanders, Drills, Saws, Etc.) from about 3pm to 5.30, at which point it will go back to the caravan to provide heat, light, tea/coffee, a small tv, and perhaps a laptop till about 10pm when it will go off for the night.

On a weekend it will be much the same, except the power tool work will run right throughout from the morning start up to the final shut-down, resting for lunch.

After 3-5 months, the house will be on mains, and should be liveable, so the generator will simply be used to help get the sheds up, provide power to the caravan on the odd days extra hands come down to help, and mainly, it will sit steady waiting as a backup in case of a power failure.

I am curios to find out how responsive the digital throttle control is, I know that the little 850W above is governed mechanically by load, not digitally, and it's not particularly responsive (not that it could power a welder, but if it could, it would provide the delay you describe above requiring a helper!)

Ty if you have any intent of fixing the GMC generator let me know i have a homelite with the same engine that would be good to use as parts for the gmc.

good to see the back pack brushcutter has been handy, it will be interesting to see it with the honda motor on it.

Overall the Backpack has been very good, and while at first the vibration had me wanting to swap engines straight away, I have gotten used to it now, and I have found the higher RPM to be very important in some situations, which is why engine swapping will wait till it's returned to domestic duty.

If you could spare the Homelite, that would be great, just send a PM with whatever you would like for it, and we will work it out!

Pm sent. the high revs definately help when the scrub gets thick. the vibration issue was what i noticed the first time i used as well but when it was up against grass that was 2-3m tall its definately needed, but 53cc was just overkill for general whipper snipping around houses etc.

I will defineitly be keeping the original engine, as it will be usefull to have it there for when the big jobs come up, but yes, i think the Honda 4-stroke will be more suited to light to moderate duty work.

Interesting about the hedge trimmer. I have one here that looks the same but its GMC brand. Was going to fix it and keep it for myself.


Ive heard those hondas are a good thing, just no good for edging, extended running them on the side starves them for oil and they die.


Im not so sure about the generator.
Sand paper and a block of wood.
Hand saws
Kerro lantern
Gas BBQ.

Who needs power.