Buy a replacement spool of the "fixed-line" variety. Examples are the
Grass Gator "Load & Cut" and the Echo "Rapid-Loader". Both types have
spring-loaded cams or wedges which retract as a short (but thick) piece
of trimmer line is inserted and then grab the line (with tiny teeth) so
that it won't fly out. Both have a number of different threaded nuts
which match about 99% of the trimmer arbors out there. Just make sure
that you CAN take the trimmer head off of your Ryobi. I've got one
electric trimmer (Black and Decker, I think) that had a head that can't
be disassembled from the arbor.

There ARE trimmer head designs that enable one to load a number of yards
of line from the outside by pushing it through the side of the head.
But one such product has a return rate of over 40%, and other such
products are designed poorly to cut effectively. I'm working on one for
the inventor of the "Load & Cut" which will be much easier to load and
be much more effective in cutting. But it'll probably be end-of-year
before the product is on the shelves at Home Depot and WalMart.

Mark 'Sporky' Stapleton
Watermark Design, LLC
http://www.h2omarkdesign.com

Sundog wrote:

I have the 780 series trimmer, unfortunately, and persuading the string to
feed is a real problem.
The trimmer has had no more than 50 hours of use so far.

I wind the spool carefully keeping both lines parallel and flat on the spool
or over the previous layer. I leave about 6" sticking out of the spool
housing on both sides and it works great for about 5 mins. In that time I
bounce the knob a few times when it's rotating at high speed. When the
cutting gets very slow, I have a look and one of the strings has
disappeared.

The winding information in Ryobi's manual is pathetic and the sketches are
as useful and as a 5 year old's. The information on their website is not
much better but different from the manual.

" Next, when winding the line, keep your finger between the two lines,
keeping one line at the top of the reel, and the other at the bottom. If the
two lines are allowed to cross each other when winding, then it will feed
until it reaches the point where they cross. You should be able to bump out
the entire length of the line if they do not cross. "

Can anyone understand "keeping one line at the top of the reel, and the
other at the bottom"? Possibly this means one string on the spool and the
other on top of it? Can anyone confirm that this works? My trimmer is some
distance away and I can't check this at present.

A search unearthed some scathing comments about Ryobi's trimmers so I might
have a lemon here.

Comments much appreciated.

Sd