We need to weed the new chemin down to our property. The surface now is not much more than packed down sand, so I don’t want to disturb it. In fact weed roots will tend to hold it together. As we’re bio I’m not prepared to use a weed killer, so I’m wondering about getting one of those weed burner wand type things. Do they work? Are they worth buying?
We have an electric one, bought from Aldi or Lidl last year. It’s not very effective, though a gas version might be better.
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I have a gas one, using the 6kg gas bottles. It came with a trolley for 13kg bottles which would be more cost effective but I found that too difficult to handle. It works, but you have to keep doing it as the smaller you fry the better. And if you let things get too big before you do it then have ugly dead vegetation,
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We used a gas burner that was previously used to melt the tar on flat roofs in the UK but not the norme in France so was redundant and it worked very well dstroying many weeds. My neighbour did the same with a butane gas bottle and a wand attatched to kill the talus weeds. However, burning only kills off the top items, not the roots down deep which come back just like the forests do after a big fire. Basically, a temporary measure.
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Which is why you have to do it when they are small so it kills them. Let an unwanted plant get too big and have developed good roots then it can survive.
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No idea if they still exist but back in about 1960 I worked in the office of Sheen(Nottm)Ltd who made paraffin weed burners in different sizes. We did a very good business with hardly any complaint or returns so I assume they were effective.
There was a reasonably popular singer of the day called Carol Carr I think and her agent was approached for an advertising campaign to publicise them. However she was too expensive for them so they looked around the office for a handsome young chap as a substitute. So that is how I became a (short lived) advertising star. They sent me across the road to the waste ground opposite, fired the machine up and took a few snaps with their cameras. I appeared eventually on the glossy advertising sheets that were distributed to the gardening press.
I was definitely cheaper than Carol Carr, in fact they paid me nothing other than my normal office boy wages. Should have got myself an agent. 
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I had one like that many, many years ago when they first came out - too cumbersome. But I thought the small 6kg gas bottle might be a possibility.
Any brand recommendations please? Or are they all much of a muchness?
Well waddyer know, they are still there, at the same address but I must say the current demonstrator isn’t a patch for looks on the original 
Here you are: contact
You might have to check with the Mairie before setting fire to the countryside though. 
I actually gave away my Sheen a couple of years back as it was, effectively, a flamethower and it scared be rigid using it! Also, I doubt if it would be legal in areas where there a serious fire worries.
I have a tamer version using the (rather expensive) butane cartridges and they do work, subject to what @JaneJones has already said. There is only one problem that I found with mine though, which was that I have metal downpipe on the house and, as I was clearing along the front wall, it rather spectacularly melted the bottom bit
I stick with using a serfouette these days as the pointy bit digs up things like dandelion roots and the flatter bit, held at an angle, does a great job of clearing more surface-rooting weeds. It’s the best all-round gardening tool I’ve ever found but you do need a good quality one as the lighter ones just crumple and break. I got my from Point Vert - don’t know if things like this are good enough quality or not…
I would agree with you Angela, except I absolutely must not disturb the surface of the chemin, as it is too fragile, hence my thought of just burning off the tops of the weeds
Sorry David, I’m being told it’s an unsafe site, so not followed your link.
Ah - that makes sense then @SuePJ 
Looks like you might have to resign yourself to doing it rather frequently with a weedburner or resorting to the vineger and salt weedkiller some of my local Brit gardeners use…
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That is surprising because it takes me directly to what is Sheen’s website and even mentions the parent company, Hugh Pritchard & Co. . There were 3 founder Pritchards there that I knew, the father, the son and the nephew.
Anyway, if you are still interested this is the phone number 00.44.115.927.2321 and the direct internet address www.sheenflamegun.co.uk
If nothing else you have brought back happy memories of my time there. The senior of the 3 of us in the office was Mr. Griffiths, very old it seemed to me, was a retired BR clerk and Sandra was the same age as me. Anticipating the openess of the emerging 1960s she was very racy in her conversation, something that delighted me with my raging young hormones, and Mr. Griffiths, fulfilling the dirty old man role.
Oh dear, I am older now than he was then. 
sounds as if the chemin is similar to our old petanque court…
I had to pull out weeds by hand or cut them off with a sharp, flat/horizontal hoe… and every so often used a roller
hard work… and sometimes managed to get a crew of volunteers helping… with a promise of Aperos as encouragement…
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I have a X300, it works on the same principle as my dad’s old paraffin blowtorch on a slightly larger scale, the liquid fuel is passed through a coiled tube which is wrapped around the flame, thus vaporising it and allowing a jet of gas which is actually burnt in what is effectively a large Bunsen burner .
As @AngelaR says one problem is that if you don’t get it quite right then the liquid fuel emerges from the burner nozzle and you have a flame-thrower on your hands - definitely not something you want if the vegetation is dry from hot summer sun! For added fun you can get a pulsating effect where fuel close to the exit remains liquid but behind that it boils so you get periodic squirts of flaming liquid fuel being emitted every second or so - it can go quite some distance.
I use it less that I did when I first acquired it - if the ground is dry I worry too much about setting fire to everything, if it is wet it’s difficult to kill the weeds and lilke every method which just deals with the tops of the weeds it needs to be re-done regularly.
Glyphosate is the way to go (ducks behind parapet).
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Thanks David for your help, I’ve gone via google and that’s worked fine. I hadn’t anticipated anything like as expensive or professional. I just have a few weeds popping up the length of the chemin and that’s the only place I will use it. I need something small and girly!
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If you want to try heat the gas based ones shouldn’t be too difficult to use, you can get variants which use a camping butane cannister - but I suspect they go through cannisters rather quickly.
The Sheeen is way too heavy if you want “girly”, but the cylinder based ones usually have a decent length of hose - eg
Which is a 38,99€ model from Leroy Merlin - you can do a stretch and then move the cylinder and, as noted above, more expensive models tend to include a trolley/sack truck for the cylinder.
No idea whether the electric ones work but I suspect that they won’t be nearly as hot, or use a lot of power, and for a chemin likely to be limited by cord length.
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Had a gas one from Lidl, then ran out of gas, as the replacements I bought from Action and which I thought were standard fitting weren’t. I found that it wasn’t particularly effective either.
Bought an electric one from Lidl last year, and now use that. Like with the gas burner one, it isn’t particularly effective, you have to spend a fair deal of time pointing at individual weeds, and dandelions and the other weeds that grow around here seem to be particularly resistant, so it takes a very loooonnnnggg time to get any reasonable surface done.
All in all, mixed feelings about them so far.
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Box of matches and a kneeler then?
Alternatively - boiling water, unless it would interfere with the structure of the chemin.
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Understood, but to you and to @billybutcher I do seem to remember that there was a much lighter one than the X300, it might have been called the Wand, but you do realise that I am reaching back into the recesses of my memory of 64 years ago. To be honest I am half surprised they are still going in the same place and, by the look of the pictures no difference in the appearance to what I remember, so they must be doing something right.
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