It makes a curved cut on too thick of wood, yes. But those too as you say can be used for a cleft.
Katy had a question about clefts and I showed her this technique.
This week nicollas I was grafting 3/8th rootstocks with scions that were 1/2 that or even less and there were times I had no option but to cleft. Of course finding a corner on a rootstock that’s much less width and therefore cutting the scion to fit that vs. the full length of a cleft cut thru the middle of the rootstock allows for a new technique. I hope that makes sense.
I should have told Katy last night and I’ll tell you and everyone else now that if you make two cuts with that tool and stick a scion on one side to match cambium and leave a gap of long distance to the other side that you won’t get very many takes.
Additionally, not everyone can use a knife to make the same V cut on a scion without many attempts. This is safe-fail way not to eat up a scion.
I ordered mine there Feb 22. Tracking hasn’t worked for my end but when asking them in the message they said that tracking shows it just made it to the US. I paid $22. My blades came a couple weeks ago.
If you make an account with them you can click on your orders. When you click on the order with the tool it shows tracking to the right with epacket. Some items don’t offer tracking but most of mine in my orders folder have tracking. I have seven items coming yet. They also like you to click on item received once you get it to finish. I bought a bottling wand for filling beer bottles while the beer is under pressure from them that was a great deal. It shows that it just made to USPS in NY.
I got mine couple weeks ago, tried it on some pruned sticks of variable thickness/types of wood, and was not happy with the results. The resulting wedge is very short and wood is damaged on the bottom side. I like cutting much longer wedges to increase the cambium contact area, so I decided not to use the tool.
I’ve noticed that the wood needs to be a certain thickness to do a longer wedge. With the right wood thickness, the contact area is quite good. A whip graft needs to be twice as long to have an equivalent amount of cambium contact.
Regarding tearing, you shouldn’t see it if your tool is well calibrated. I see very minimal tearing with mine. I sometimes clean out the cut with a knife. It is pretty easy to do
If I had thin pieces of scionwood and/or unmatched stock/wood thicknesses, I agree that a knife is better.
Based on the recommendations here, I bought a generic tool from Amazon for slightly less than 30 bucks. This spring I used it for 4 pear, 2 apple, and 3 plum grafts. 100% success, compared to my previous approximately 60 % success rate. I can’t attribute all of this to the tool since I also went to wrapping the entire scion in parafilm and using temflex to hold the graft, but the tool obviously worked great for me. It was also quicker and elimantes the danger of using knives. Faster, safer, and more effective…hard to complain about that.
They were out of stock at the Aliexpress store. That’s why I have been waiting. They give so many days of insured shipping to when the items from Ali are to be received. That expired, and I didn’t extend it so my item closed and says finished. They give you the option to open a dispute and get your money back, but the sub store asked me to wait so I did. The tracking still says it’s in china and never left on my end but the ali looked at it and said that it is in the US. I just hope they didn’t mix up and look at my other orders that do show they are in NY. I’m not to worried because I have a new blade on my omega tool anyway. It will probably get here. This site has always done well for me in the past.
If you go to the Ali store do not buy from alloet Tools Factory-outlet Store. I just got a refund from them on a purchase Feb 25th. I repurchased from a different vender in the Ali store for $23.84. My buyers protection plan from Ali Express was going to run out so I opened a dispute and alloet Tools Factory-outlet Store refunded my paypal account. I ordered from Expectations this time. If it comes in the usual 20 day time frame I might get to graft with it still this year.
They didn’t have it in stock.
The store is probably still good for other things but this item they were having problems restocking. I think this Aliexpress is like Ebay to us. If you open an account they guarantee your order for a certain amount of days. That purchase plan was running out so they make the sub store refund the money upon my request by clicking on the dispute link. I could have left it go till it was restocked but I didn’t want to gamble on losing my money. I tried again with a different seller. It will probably work this time. I think one difference between Aliexpress and ebay is Ali doesn’t have their sellers list how many items are left.
I used mine for the first time today. Not impressed. Very difficult to keep the back side of the scion from tearing out and the rest of the scion begins to split down the center. I replaced the blades with the spares and had the same results. I had much better results from the cheap omega grafting tool I purchased 3 years ago. It uses an anvil style cutter and provided better results.
In the end, I still prefer grafting with a knife better than either tool.
Also, my first year using rubber bands/rubbers was also disappointing. Too difficult to tie the band off tightly. I switched back to tem-flex and it is a breeze. Only downside is it’s difficult to remove.
Here is a look at the sloppy grafting tool cut and tear out.
