Using and Buying Garden Hand Pruners

One of the most valued pieces of equipment in the serious gardener’s tool box is a pair of hand pruners. Also known as secateurs, these handheld cutters are necessary anywhere in the garden. No gardener is prepared to lend out a pair of their favorite hand pruners, particularly when they get themselves a pair that sit comfortably in their hands.

The garden pruners are necessary for the gardener to perform tasks such as snipping off spent stems from last year’s growth, cutting away suckers that shouldn’t be there, trimming a showpiece shrub, removing a broken stem or taking a rose stem to be placed in a vase.

Hand pruners are necessary for any stem cutting that is required on anything up to ½ an inch thick. Anything thicker than this and the hand pruners will struggle to make a clean cut and it’s the cleanness of the cut that is important to the health of the plant.

A good hand pruner is lightweight and strong. It fits comfortably in the hand and cuts cleanly and precisely. They are most often made of aluminum alloy and are coated with vinyl. The more expensive hand pruners will be available in left handed as well as right handed models.

As for the blades of your hand pruners, ideally they will be made of tempered carbon steel. They should be kept sharp although they should remain sharp for quite some time. When you notice that they’re becoming a little blunt they able to be sharpened, which is quite a quick and easy task. A simple whetstone might be enough to maintain a nice clean edge.

The hand pruner pictured here is a Felco #2 bypass hand pruner. This brand of hand pruner is generally acknowledged as one of the best hand pruners you can possibly buy.

When heading out to buy a hand pruner there are some aspects that you should be looking for.

• You should make sure the hand pruner has a safety latch to keep the blades closed when the pruner is not in use. This latch should be able to be operated easily with the flick of a thumb.
• The spring that operates the blades should work smoothly with no signs of catching. Before you buy your hand pruner you should try it out a few times to ensure this is the case.
• Try to find out whether the blades of the hand pruner you are buying can be replaced and that replacement blades are readily available to buy.
• There should be no lateral movement in the blades. The tips of the blades should completely adjoin, not leaving a gap when the blades are closed.
• The hand pruner you choose has to feel comfortable in the hand and should be easy to manipulate. There are models available with revolving lower handles to make it easier to operate when continuously pruning heavier stems.

There are three main types of hand pruners that you will have to choose from. Although it may appear as though there are more different types they are all variations of either scissors, bypass pruners or anvil pruners.

The scissors pruners are designed along the same principle as ordinary scissors and are used for trimming the soft tips from bundles of cuttings or for softwood cutting work. The long pointed blades make them ideal for getting in and doing some precise cutting.

Bypass pruners are by far the most common type of pruner and these pruners makes precise, clean cuts thanks to a beveled cutting blade. The blades glide past each other when cutting through stems.

Anvil pruners as so called because they consist of a cutting blade and a non-cutting anvil type of blade. These types of pruners are most appropriate for cutting dead wood.

Some people know hand pruners or pruning shears by another name – secateurs. In Great Britain and Australia all pruning is done with secateurs, but the fact is that they are exactly the same gardening tool. Bypass secateurs and anvil secateurs are your options, just as they are with hand pruners. Only the names have been changed.

So if you are looking for information about a set of secateurs, say, Felco 2 Classic Secateur and can’t find what you’re looking for, then try a search for the Felco 2 Classic Hand Pruners.

Ratchet pruners are used for larger stems or branches that require a good deal of force to make the cut. The pruner is equipped with a mechanism that will assist the pruner blades as they make their way through the branch. As the ratchet pruner progresses through it ends up making a solid, clean cut to smoothly cut the branch. Someone who needs to do a lot of pruning of medium to large branches would use one of these, as would someone with a problem gripping their pruning handles strongly.

Corona is a manufacturer of quality tools and products that you can rely on in the garden. The range of pruning tools includes bypass pruners and anvil pruners in a number of different sizes and features. One of the big advantages s that the Corona pruners come with a lifetime warranty as well as a list of replacement parts that is available on the Corona website.

The Corona company has been manufacturing tools for both the professional and the domestic consumer since the early 1920s. There are more types of hand pruners made by the company that have been briefly summarized above. More information can be found about all of the Corona hand pruners by selecting one of the pruners for sale below.

This bypass hand pruner has an eccentrically shaped ergonomic head that makes cutting much easier. The blade and the hook are made from forged steel for high performance cutting with a maximum cutting capacity of 1”. These hand pruners retail for a little over $31.00.

This is a bypass hand pruner that has a maximum diameter cutting capacity of up to 1”. It is a lightweight pruner that has an ergonomically angled head that will make cutting easier. This hand pruner retails for around $29.00 and is a little cheaper than the BP 4240 due to the fact that the blades are made from forged aluminum.

This bypass hand pruner has a maximum cutting capacity of up to ¾” diameter and the blades are made from high carbon steel. The blade, hook and handles are all fully heat treated. The lock on this hand pruner is a clip that fits over the end of the handles so that it stays out of the way when using the pruners. This pruner retails for around $18.00.

This is a bypass hand pruner that has a ¾” cutting capacity with a blade and hook made from forged steel. The pruner has a highly angled head so that there is less bending of the wrist required and the pruner is also equipped with a self-aligning pivot bolt. This hand pruner retails for around $28.00.

This is an anvil pruner with a ¾” cutting capacity and the blade is made of high-carbon steel. The handles are vinyl coated and the grip is what is known as a pistol grip. The locking mechanism sits at the top of the handles so that it can be operated by the thumb. This can occasionally be a problem as the thumb can inadvertently deploy the lock. This is a solid anvil hand pruner that retails for around $14.00.

This anvil pruner has a cutting capacity of 5/8” diameter and the anvil blade is made of high carbon heat treated steel. It is a lightweight hand pruner and the handles have been made with a specially designed co-molded grip that has been made to fit all hand sizes. This anvil pruner retails for less than $10.00.

It is not going to be possible to do all of your pruning whilst standing on the ground. Larger shrubs and trees also need to be pruned and those branches will be out of reach. Rather than have to use a ladder that must be continually repositioned and manoeuvred around the shrub, a telescopic pruner will come in very useful. These pruners are also often referred to as pole tree pruners.

Telescopic pruners are a type of pole pruner and they give you the long reach you require without having to leave the ground. They operate by means of a telescopic pole that can be adjusted depending on the height you have to reach. The pruning shears are operated by a rope attachment that uses a pulley system to do the cutting. When the loppers are positioned you simply pull on the cord and the blade slices cleanly through the small branch.

In order to prune larger branches these telescopic pruners are usually fitted with a pruning saw. Pruning saws are excellent branch pruners but they must be kept nicely sharpened for them to cut at their most effective capacity. You may find pole pruners ranging in reach from 2.5 meters up to around 7 meters. Anything beyond this will prove to be too unwieldy to use.

For the most part when it comes to the task of pruning you will use a set of manual hand pruners. These pruners give you the precision you need to ensure that you are making the cut at exactly the right place on the stem and at exactly the right angle. However, there is a case for the use of electric pruners, particularly if you have a large hedge that needs to be trimmed regularly.

There are two types of electric pruners available, the first is powered by an electric cord while the second, the more commonly found, is a cordless electric pruner. It is going to be more usual that the cordless electric pruners will be used because there will not always be a power source nearby to where they are to be used.  Electric pruners operate similar to a pair of shears with a cutting blade moving rapidly across a stationary blade to form the cutting action.

Electric pruners make quick work of hedges that have to be trimmed. When trimming hedges the aim is often to ensure a neat, even cut so that the hedge resembles a living wall. Electric pruners make this result easier to achieve.

Not quite the same as electric pruners, power pruners provide assistance when cutting through harder, woody stems that would be difficult to cut manually. This type of pruner operates at the push of a button. The blades are positioned where you wish to make the cut and then you simply pull the trigger. When the trigger is pulled, force is applied to the blades and the pruners do the rest.

A cautionary not with these pruners, you should be very careful using these pruners because they are capable of applying a lot of power when cutting. It would be very possible to do some serious damage to a finger should it get caught up in the blades.

Everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy gardening. Gardeners with arthritis will have trouble pruning with a standard set of hand pruners. For this reason ergonomic pruners have been developed to assist those who have trouble gripping the handles. Ergonomic pruners have been designed so that less muscle power is needed to make the cut.

All of the major pruner manufacturers such as Fiskars and Felco provide an ergonomic option to give all of the assistance you need.

In many cases the angle of the pruner head is different to that of a standard set of pruners so that the user doesn’t have to twist their wrist to attain an appropriate cutting angle.

In order to prune some of the larger shrubs while remaining on the ground you should use a pair of long reach pruners. These pruners work in a manner similar to the standard hand pruners except that the handles are far, far longer. There are models that are extremely lightweight so that even though they are around 2 feet in length they can still be operated with one hand.

A long pruner is not necessarily used for pruning high branches, they also allow you to reach into the middle of a large bushy shrub and trim the internal growth. Just like the smaller hand pruners, long arm pruners come in both bypass and anvil types.

It should be pointed out that long reach pruners are not the same as a pole pruner. Pole pruners are essentially the top of a hand pruner that has been attached to the end of a pole while long reach pruners consist of two handles just as a standard pruner does.

In order to make these pruners as useful as possible and able to be used by all kinds of gardeners the long reach pruners are designed so that little exertion is needed to operate the blades. In a lot of cases the operator of these pruners is going to be at full stretch in trying to reach the stems being cut so it is important that the actual cutting itself is simple.

It is believed that it would be better not to prune a tree or shrub rather than to prune it incorrectly. If a tree or shrub is pruned the wrong way it can cause damage to the plant that could threaten to kill it. For this reason it is important to get an understanding about the right way to go about pruning your plants.

There are a number of reasons why it is a good idea to prune, they include training the plant to grow the way you would like, to maintain the health of the plant, to restrict the plant’s growth, to improve the quality and amount of fruit or foliage.

The first requirement you must meet if you are going to make the correct pruning cuts is that your pruners are sharp. If your hand pruners are not sufficiently sharp the wound will be ragged which will retard healing. When cutting to a lateral branch you should try to choose a branch that is no more than 45 degrees to the branch to be removed. Make your cut just above the intersecting branch and cut it at a slant so that water will not collect in the wound.

When cutting to a bud make the cut half an inch above the bud. If you make the cut too close to the bud, the bud usually dies. On the other hand if the cut is made too far away from the bud the wood above the bud usually dies. This will give you dead tips at the outside of the plant.

If you are pruning to try to encourage flower growth on the plant different pruning methods will affect the way the flowers appear. If you want a lot of flowers give the tips of the old growth a prune, this will result in many flowers but they will be smaller. If you want large, high quality blooms you should prune extensively. The number of flowers will be fewer but they will be larger and more impressive.

It is necessary to keep your hand pruner blades sharp and in good working order. Regular sharpening will be required to keep the edge honed. This may be done with the blades attached or you could dismantle the pruner and do the sharpening with the blades separated.

The hand pruner should also be oiled, particularly the spring to ensure that the blades spring back into the ready position after cutting.

It is a good idea to wipe down your hand pruner with warm soapy water each time you have finished in the garden for the day and you have been using your pruner. Giving them a light oil as well will help to prevent them from getting rusty.

If the hand pruner has been used to cut stems that are thicker than the recommended thickness it is possible that the blades will become nicked or bent. This is where buying a pruner with a replaceable blade will prove to be invaluable. Damaged blades can potentially cause disease in the plants they are used on.

When you go out to buy a pair of hand pruners try to buy the best you can possibly afford. A top of the line hand pruner should just about last a lifetime.

One of the important maintenance tasks that is mentioned over and over again is the task of sharpening your hand pruners. Here is a quick demonstration of how you should go about it.

If you are looking for a type of oil to use on hand pruners you should try a product like Corona CLP Shear Oil which only costs around $8. Alternatively you could try Sumo Shear Oil which comes in a pen and can be applied to the blades of your pruners with a supplied brush. This is the type of oil used by the Samurai in Japan to prevent corrosion on their swords.

If you can’t find any other kind of oil that specifies it is suitable for hand pruners you can use an oil such as sewing machine oil. When it comes down to it, you only need to apply a light coating to the blades before giving them a wipe with a clean rag. What you are hoping to achieve when oiling your pruners is to protect them from rust and to keep them in good working order. 

There are a number of quality manufacturers of pruning equipment to look for supplying all kinds of hand pruners such as bypass pruners, ratchet pruners and anvil pruners not to mention larger two handed pruners and loppers. You can be sure with products such as Corona pruners, Felco pruners, Fiskars pruners and Bahco pruners.

Each of the companies mentioned above will be able to supply a full range of pruners to ensure that no matter what type of pruning you have to perform there will be a quality product to use. Ratcheting pruners or pole tree pruners are all covered and no matter whether you are looking for an expensive specific type of pruner or a more reasonably priced pruner, the various makes and models are aimed to compete for your attention.