Has anyone used a turf cutter? How strong do you need to be?!!

[ADuckCalledBill]

I need to clear a largish patch of turf to make a new bed (too much to do by hand). I've looked into hiring a turf cutter (Jewsons do one at £55/day) which looks perfect but I was worried it might be too heavy for me to use (I am only 5 ft and not very strong - not waft in a breeze feeble but just not great at heavy lifting! ) Has anyone got experience of using one?
Thanks

I thought you meant one of those half moon turf cutters and was going to say weight and jumping needed. Sorry cant advise with truff cutter, but it is possible to strip large areas of turf by hand (did our whole samll garden over 3 days) as long as you dont go too deep.

We have really heavy clay soil, dh spent hours yesterday doing it and only did a fraction of what we needed so time to bring in the heavy machinery I think

I suspect that a big problem will be the vibrations. love the delegation of work though

They're quite heavy and difficult to get to the right depth. I ended up using a turf spade.

We used one last year - in fact, DH did all the turf cutting as we were worried about my RSI getting worse, but I think I could have used it - I did a little trial and it seemed okay. Takes a while to get it right, though.

Best bit was when we went to the garden tool hire shop to return the turf lifter, and the man said 'Do you mind me asking what you used it for, sir?' To which DH looked at him blankly and said 'for lifting turf'. We have never to this day worked out what the man actually meant.

DH does only three jobs in the garden - turf lifting, mowing the front garden (not the back), and watering. And now he's selfishly got stuck abroad, and I have to do my own watering.

How inconvenient!