With edgers, each tool has a purpose and each tool has its function. Can you do the whole job with any of these tools? Yes, you can; however, with some, you are not going to reach a toe kick because it’s not designed for that. We need to know the application of the tool and not push the edger to its limits.
There is skirting on the edgers to try to control dust. To be blunt, if there is a machine full of blue tape and I try to utilize that as a dust skirt system, all of that dust sticks to the blue tape. Dust is the most marvelous insulator you can put on a machine as it makes your machine run a lot hotter, makes it look unprofessional, and it doesn’t perform in the long run with a blue tape dust skirt. I recommend going back to OEM skirting. If the OEM doesn’t have a skirt, you can make a good one with Velcro that can be adjusted up and down. I have skirting on the back, some have brushes, and some have skirting on the front. Understand the particular machine you are going to run and obviously keep it in that manner so that it performs according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
The last thing I’ll say about edgers is many people get in a situation where they need to be a little more aggressive and they don’t want to go out to the truck to get a little coarser paper. They will start laying into it, or what I call “dogging” the machine. They will press down super hard and try to get the edger to do what it is not supposed to do. That also means the paper is doing what it is not meant to do. When you labor the machine, it gets hot and wears it out. When you labor the paper, it gets hot and wears it out. A good friend in the construction business that had bulldozers and cranes, once said “we are going to use the tool, but we are not going to abuse the tool.” If he’s worried about that for a bulldozer, think about how much more I should be concerned about my Super 7R, my Elan, my Flip, and all of those machines. Use it, but definitely do not abuse it.
