Our neighborhood has all these funny restrictions like:

grass CANNOT hang over the curb
weeds CANNOT be allowed to take over your flower beds
lawns SHALL be mowed frequently
grass SHALL not be TOO TALL.

And when these horrible sins are witnessed by the neighborhood nosey patrol more than once, you get a nasty letter:
"THOU SHALL FIX THY SIN!! "
Sigh.

One of my sins I confess is that I let the grass (umm weeds) hang over the curb too often. I have an electric weed wacker (still on the grid, but at least it's electric) that I use to clean off the hairy curb. But until recently, cleaning off the raggedly curb meant either cough up the $$ for a pre-wound spool of weed wacker line, or refill it myself and have the doggone thing jam up every five feet. I've been choosing to rewind it myself and endure the snarled up line problem because I'm way beyond cheap. Stingy might be a better adjective.

That snarly line thing apparently happens to other folks too. I kept thinking there has to be an easier solution that didn't involve paying more money. So I put my thinking cap on, looked at instructables for advice and I was completely surprised no one has ever written any instructables about this particular hassle.

Until now.

Step 1: Why the Bother?

Why bother to rewrap the spool? Here's the evidence:

A prewound spool of 20 feet is: $ 6.79 at Lowes (closest hardware store),$ .34 per foot
A packet of the 40 feet of the stuff to rewind yourself is: $3.25 $.08 per foot
And a packet of 275 feet (almost 14 times as much) is $7.97 $.03 per foot
Now I didn't add in the gas money to go to the store, but you figure this out...

And a spool of 20 feet will get me around my fairly small property one time, maybe two times if I'm lucky. (I confess again that besides the hairy curbs I use the weed wacker to get back behind where the lawnmower won't fit and edge the flower beds). I don't like nasty letters.

Step 2: Ingredients

Spool from weed wacker
New line to refill (.065 inch diameter)
scissors
hands

Step 3: Refilling the Spool

There are no directions on how to rewind line, other than an arrow pointing the direction to rewind line and some vague references about threading through eyelet and putting the top back on. Some spools don't even have words, just arrows.

The problem with rewinding the line is how to get it started so it stays on the spool and is fairly tight.

I've tried many permentations, but finally got success with this method.

Cut off a fairly long piece of trimmer line (10-15 feet). I've never managed to get 20 feet on the spool and don't expect to ever get that much on by hand wrapping.

Look closely for a little bitty hole in your spool.Look inside and on the bottom, I promise it won't be obvious.

Stick the line in the hole a little bit (about an inch) and then gently wrap it around one time watching to see if you're winding in the direction of your arrow for your machine. Then slightly tug back to get some tension and start neatly wrapping the line.

Wrap the line next to itself, trying not to overly twist the line as you wrap. You want the line to FLOW off the spool without kinks or twists which will jam the line.

When you finish one row, start wrapping over top of the line, again trying to be neat, but you won't ever achieve the complete zen beauty of that prewound spool. Just do the best you can and remember how much money you're saving.

Leave a tail of about 4-6 inches to start you off trimming. I have a little notch that you put the line in so that it doesn't unspin all of the line. Lucky me! Tuck the line in the notch and rethread into the eyelet of your machine. Close up the spool properly on your machine and give a gentle tug for the line to release from the notch. Power up and blitz away!

Success is when you find yourself wacking without stopping every 5 feet and the only thing that stops you is when you run out of line!

Step 4: Fix It Yourself

My instructable has to do with my particular weed wacker. I'm sure yours is different. But, if you look at your spool while it is still full you usually can figure out where to start your line. I've included a picture of a spool that I purchased for another weed wacker that bit the dust sometime ago and you can see this one has a hole that you thread through on the bottom.

I'm not sure I would've ever figured out how to rewind this one (hence the prewound spool purchase) but now that I know the secret, I think I would be able to rewind properly and save that money for something more useful.

Final thoughts: (I'm copying sunshiine as this is such a nice thing to do) I appreciate instructables for all the wonderful solutions to otherwise baffling little and big problems that one encounters in life. Thanks so much! I also appreciate instructables for allowing me to write these instructables, therefore getting my sweet husband off the hook from having to listen to me tell him what wonderful solution I've discovered!!