Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

Let’s see a show of hands for everyone who has owned or used a domestic garden strimmer. This tool has become essential in many gardens, selling in large quantities over the years. But just how long has the garden strimmer, with its nylon cutting line, been available? And who came up with the idea, and when?

After the invention of the lawn mower, the next challenge was dealing with the grass that mowers couldn’t reach. While a well-designed garden and lawn can minimize these inaccessible areas, the simplest way to tidy up around shrubs, trees, or obstacles has always been with shears – a method that still works well today. However, if there is a mechanical or powered way to mow the lawn, why not have a similar tool for trimming those difficult-to-reach bits of grass?

It’s worth noting a few early inventions that preceded the strimmer, as untidy bits of lawn have long been a pain in the grass. In the 1960s, a mechanical device called the Swivel Cut Lawn Edge Trimmer was marketed by Greensleeves (Illustrated). This tool featured a pair of shears mounted on two small wheels with a long shaft, allowing the gardener to push it along. At the top of the shaft was a spring-loaded, squeezable handle used to open and close the blades. The long shaft eliminated the need for the gardener to work on their hands and knees. The shears could be used vertically for lawn edges or horizontally for flat areas. Around the same time, Wolf of Ross-on-Wye produced a similar tool called the Orbital Long Shears, which had a 40″ shaft and a squeezable handle.

Powered machines for cutting small patches of grass did feature quite early, but they relied on steel blades as their means of cutting, and many were wheeled or required to be resting on the ground.

Introduced mid-century, Tarpen Engineering Co. Ltd had the electric-powered Grassmaster and Vergemaster models (Illustrated below). These machines, with long shafts enabling the gardener to work standing, were ideal for mowing awkward places where a mower could not be used and for clearing weeds and long grass.

In 1957 Tractors (London) Limited launched the Trusty Whirlwind (Illustrated). This two-wheel machine was marketed as a weeding tool and at wheel level had a 1/3 hp JAP engine that powered a 6” steel disc via a v-belt; the operator was in a standing position.

Many other machines designed primarily for trimming vertical lawn edges had been developed. These include the battery-operated Andrews Spintrim (Illustrated), which featured ‘fast spinning blades’ that finely chopped the lawn edge clippings, eliminating the need for cleanup. It was claimed that the Spintrim could handle one mile of edging in an hour. Advertisements for the Spintrim also suggested that manual grass shears were ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘time-wasting.’

Eventually, a couple of entrepreneurs had a Eureka moment and realized that using a thin nylon line would be a much better, easier, and safer solution than metal blades. The nylon line could cut closer and cause less damage to the objects it encountered. It could cleanly cut up to hard surfaces like walls and rocks, trim around small items, and tidy lawn edges, while also being suitable for larger areas of grass and weeds. This marked the decline of small domestic machines with metal blades, as many manufacturers quickly adopted nylon line trimmers. There was likely a lucrative market for branded trimmer line replacement spools, though I can’t prove that!

When did nylon line trimmers appear in the UK?

Trade magazines generally state that nylon line trimmers debuted in the UK in 1975/76 – that’s nearly 50 years ago as I write this – although the first two models, detailed below, had been sold abroad before this time. 

The first UK-retailed model is regarded as being the USA-made Weedeater. This was followed by the Adlus UFO from Germany. However, other manufacturers may have seen the nylon line machines abroad and started their versions in the UK but had not yet become mainstream.

The Weedeater, introduced in the USA in 1972, was invented by George Ballas of Texas. He was inspired by the individual nylon brush strands on a drive-through car wash that would clean a car without any bodywork damage. It was reported that a prototype cutting head (a beer can with strands of fishing line) was attached to his electric trimmer instead of the steel blade – and it was a success.

Initially, the Weedeater models introduced here in 1975/76, which looked like today’s strimmers, were retailed by Allen Power Equipment Ltd, Oxford. The mains electric models included the nicely-named ‘Snippy’ at £24.95 ex vat in 1978, and in 1980 a rechargeable model with a battery charger became available priced at £47.50. Petrol models were marketed including a 14cc lightweight model suitable for domestic gardens.

The competing Adlus UFO (Illustrated on the right) from Germany was a different machine from the Weedeater yet worked on the same cutting principles. Again, a design by someone who figured that nylon line would be ideal for grass trimming. However, rather than being a standard trimmer design, the Adlus UFO was a handheld device (like a small shrub pruner but with a trimmer head) that had the option of an extension handle to make it a trimmer that the gardener could use when standing. The handle was priced at £4.72 + 12.5% VAT in 1976;  the trimmer was £29.50 + VAT.

The Adlus UFO was designed in the 1960s and sold across Europe. Although its introduction to the UK is often cited as occurring in 1975/76, advertisements for it appeared in UK newspapers as early as 1972. Initially, the UK agent was IXP Ltd, Yeadon, Leeds, which sold the UFO trimmer by mail order for £18.30 in the early 1970s. By 1976, Ameeco-Broby Ltd, based in Basildon, Essex, had taken over as the agent.

Both the Weedeater and the Adlus UFO used nylon line but it was much thinner on the Adlus and would wear out quicker. The thickness of the line was reflected in the price of a new nylon spool – the Adlus spool cost only 98p + 8% VAT, and the Weedeater spool was £2.95 +12.5% VAT in 1976.

Were nylon line trimmers an instant success?

The Weedeater and Adlus UFO gained popularity, catching the attention of other manufacturers. As a result, nylon line trimmers quickly became the next essential mechanized tool for lawn care.

Manufacturers were falling over themselves to get a slice of the action, this was propelled by Black & Decker who ran TV adverts in the summer of 1978 for their ‘Strimmer’ (String trimmer and thus the strimmer name became often used and now in common parlance) – essentially anyone with a lawn and a mower was a target for needing a Strimmer. Their models were the B&D D409 (Illustrated) with a 9” cut (£19.95) and a deluxe version that upgraded to 12” and automatic line feed priced at £45.

So popular was this new nylon line idea, that two years after the launch of the Weedeater and Adlus UFO, the Institute of Groundsmanship Exhibition in 1978 had a whole host of mains-electric nylon line models on show, although quite a lot of brand engineering was going on.

Some models at the exhibition were:

• Danarm had a model that was bought in
• Flymo (Illustrated below) had two models but the smaller one was a rebranded RotaShear
• Hyett Adams was selling genuine RotaShear strimmers
• AL-KO had a rebranded model
• Toro (Illustrated below), sold by Autoturfcare, had a range of Toro strimmers. 
• Others at the time were the Graswip Lawn Trimmer from the Village Blacksmith range sold by Thomas. A. Edison, Coventry
• Solo Power Equipment offered the Solo engine with various attachments including a monofilament safety head
• Wolf Tools, Ross-on-Wye, marketed their 240w  9” Wolf-Trimit Standard, and the De-Luxe version with a 340w motor and a 16” cut
• PaiceSetter were selling several petrol models
• Poulan petrol strimmers had the Trimette grass cutter attachments
• Husqvarna had petrol models ideal for the handyman and around the garden

Petrol models also marketed in 1978 included the Italian-made two-stroke 28cc Tiger 40 from E. P. Barrus, Bicester, and the brilliant Homelite lightweight model ST-100 2-stroke which utilised the hollow handle as a fuel tank (Illustrated, right). Stihl and McCulloch got in on the lightweight petrol-powered nylon line strimmer idea with many adverts in the 1980s.

Many manufacturers who had previously offered steel blade brush cutters now also added nylon-line heads, in 1977 this included PaiceSetter, East Grinstead, Sussex who advertised their new Elta/Fuji models which had a ‘super safe cutting head’ and two high-strength, low-cost replaceable nylon filaments.

There were alternatives to the nylon line. In 1980, Hemming & Wood of Lichfield introduced Duralon blades to complement their Sawtec range of grass trimmers and brush cutters. These Duralon blades were pivoted when mounted on a central housing. The blades were claimed to offer a longer lifespan than nylon line and were suitable for both grass cutting and lawn edging.

Other ideas for trimmers included ATCO which in the early 1980s advertised a 12-volt strimmer that could be attached to the electrics on their garden tractors. This enabled the gardener to tidy around the trees and borders when out mowing and away from mains electric.

In 1987, Flymo observed that many strimmer owners were ready to purchase replacement machines. This segment represented 25% of the market, with buyers seeking ergonomic designs and improved features. In response, in 1987, Flymo introduced the standard Mini-Trim with an 8-inch cutting width and the Multi-Trim. The Multi-Trim featured a twistable horizontal cutting head for vertical lawn edging, assisted by a built-in roller for guiding along the lawn edge. To be fair, other manufacturers, including Wolf with their Rotomat ‘Vario’ in the mid-1980s, had already marketed rotating head trimmers. By 1990, the Flymo Multi-Trim range had expanded to three models with 8, 10, and 12-inch cutting widths. Many of these models are likely still in use today, as they perform all the functions expected of a garden strimmer with ease.

Nylon line trimmers, petrol or electric, can be found in almost every garden across the land. The cutting design and idea haven’t changed much although there are minor advances with guards, guides and handles. One can say that the original strimmer idea was a complete success!

Looking back at the article, has anybody got an original Adlus UFO or one of the first Weedeaters or the 12-volt strimmer that ATCO sold for their tractors?