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Anybody who has ever mixed their own substrate has done it. Shredding Sphagnum…
Sounds simple enough, unwrap the brick slowly and snip it apart bit by bit. The trouble is that when working with a large quantity the scissors start to hurt your hands pretty quickly! Time to evolve… The next time around I unwrapped the whole brick and pulled it apart with my hands into a small box. Then with one hand on each handle of the scissors I found I was able to open and close the blades very rapidly with minimal fatigue to the weaker hand muscles. Using the muscles in my arms to work the scissors while moving them up and down in the pile of moss proved to be quite the step up from the original technique but still felt wildly inefficient. Currently I am using the technique I just described but with one modification. I now hold several pairs of scissors (placed in line) at a time so that I’m opening and closing multiple blades in unison (all while exerting roughly the same energy as with a single pair), the difference obviously being that I’m accomplishing twice the work..
Still, there has to be a better way. I don’t think a food processor would to it. I’m searching for “best practice” here, how do break your Sphagnum up and why?
Sounds simple enough, unwrap the brick slowly and snip it apart bit by bit. The trouble is that when working with a large quantity the scissors start to hurt your hands pretty quickly! Time to evolve… The next time around I unwrapped the whole brick and pulled it apart with my hands into a small box. Then with one hand on each handle of the scissors I found I was able to open and close the blades very rapidly with minimal fatigue to the weaker hand muscles. Using the muscles in my arms to work the scissors while moving them up and down in the pile of moss proved to be quite the step up from the original technique but still felt wildly inefficient. Currently I am using the technique I just described but with one modification. I now hold several pairs of scissors (placed in line) at a time so that I’m opening and closing multiple blades in unison (all while exerting roughly the same energy as with a single pair), the difference obviously being that I’m accomplishing twice the work..
Still, there has to be a better way. I don’t think a food processor would to it. I’m searching for “best practice” here, how do break your Sphagnum up and why?