I’m a black sheep to this thread, but I’ll offer what is my experience, which is very different.
I think all this debate to what are the best pruners is very helpful to a point.
But the “grade” for the best pruner becomes moot and insignificant at an intensive point, when manual pruners become obsolete.
I own lots of ARS pruners, but I don’t use them to prune anymore.
It’s something I discovered a few years ago. Regardless of how efficient manual pruners are, they can’t compare to battery operated pruners.
Alan and I have talked about this in the past, but I personally think it is very inefficient to use manual pruners, when pruning lots of hours per day.
My experience over the years has reinforced and galvanized my opinion that battery operated pruners are really the only efficient option for expending major pruning time.
It’s so much faster, easier on the operator. One can’t understand until they experience it for days on end of pruning.
I and my help have done both manual and battery pruners. It’s such a big difference that I’ve told my help I would buy a new battery powered pruner every year, if the existing one gave out. The battery powered pruners pay for themselves every year. Again it’s not only faster, but easier on the operator. I’m all for making things easier for hired help. If the person is less exhausted because of a more automated choice, it’s a no brainer. Not only if you are looking for efficiency, but also if you like your employees you want to make things easier for them.
I’m not trying to prune fast in this video, but this demonstrates how easy it is to prune peach trees. I don’t give much effort to speed in pruning in this vid. I don’t doubt high effort could make my pruning video faster. I’ve gone much faster.
Peaches take me relatively very little time to prune- with a loppers, mostly. The lions share of my pruning is on apples and I remove more with my saw than my hand pruner. I work through trees raking off annual growth with the saw except when the angle requires a hand pruner- or when thinning annual shoots on bearing wood. When other commercial pruners get close to us in the time this all takes I will worry about another method, but the thing about hand tools is that if you can avoid RMS they tend to be good for your body to use. If you get a couple extra years use out of your body, that is certainly worth something. Squeezing a hand pruner delays the onset of arthritis, I believe.
A spring chicken like you doesn’t have to worry about such things, but I will be 70 in 4 days. I don’t plan on retiring any time soon, but probably before I start using power pruners.
TY. I need to get a new pruner. My old one hit the bucket this month. So it is so old no parts are available, so I tossed it.
I will give these a try. TY for the clarification. I wanted to make sure before I buy them.
I picked up a great folding pruner thanks to Alan mentioning his non-foldable hand saw.
Alan’s using this:
The right tool for the job for him…
I’m going to use this:
I bought a couple Bahco’s that I used the last 3-4 years, but see how thick the handle and blade are? When I need to get into trees with lots of branching that’s all in your face and branching near each other against a trunk, that narrow folder is going to make life much easier, plus it’s teeth and steel are far-superior. Here’s the Bahco which is an excellent choice for anyone not wishing to spend twice the money. I highly recommend it:
Bahco laplander used to cost 20 bucks.
Here’s the longer folding saw made by Silky:
vs. the larger handles and wider/larger blades of other Silky models, all with Japanese steel:
It is not meant that way. I’m sorry if you took offence.
I don’t see where i insulted you. What exactly did you take as an insult?
Again it was not my goal to insult you.
I just saw you make claims about a tool i own. that where in my opinion wildly inaccurate. I suspected you where not talking from experience. And i called you out on that. That’s sometime you’ve done numerous times to others on the forum. I don’t see how that’s insulting you.
Well I would not pick a dentist based on how many patents he sees. I would pick based on the quality of his work, not quantity.
I tend to like pruners that work well for me, and not on price or brand.
Although I do respect your opinion. I bought ARS because of your reviews, and I did like them better than anything else I used. But if I did not I would have no problem checking others out. I now want to check other pruners based on the experience of others on this thread. One thing I don’t like about them is on very hard wood like Locust, they perform quite poorly and require a lot of pressure to cut correctly. As mentioned in this thread, I think it has something to do with the size of the blade.
I’m going to sharpen them and make sure that is not the issue before I buy another.
I have only sharpened them once so far. I use multiple stones, and a strap or piece of wood to finish edge.
I do care for them, no rust, they look brand new, but are quite old. I love the ARS cleaner and lubricant. Awesome stuff. You can leave them in the rain and the cleaner will remove all rust, and prevent it from happening in the future. Old rust and stains stay on and are hard to remove. But if you use the cleaner after every use the blade stays pristine.
Back to the original topic. Here’s my ARS pruner after a few years. It was sometimes left outside . It was bought on Ebay but I don’t remember the seller. Maybe counterfeit. Obviously I’m not impressed.
You have the REAL ARS pruner, but if you leave it outside and don’t take care of it, this is what it’s going to look like, after a few years.
I’ve had mine for almost 10 years and it looks almost brand new. I’ve never sharpened mine and it still cuts like a champ.
If you take a wire brush to that and oil it up, it should look shiny and newer in a short period of time.This is one of the things I struggle with on different materials. To get the strongest, hardest, best steel you have the downside of rust to combat. If you go with a stainless steel, you don’t have to battle rust but it is a softer steel that likely will need to be sharpened much more often. Unfortunately most things like this have some sort of tradeoff.
And by wire brush I am envisioning a grinder or a drill with a wire wheel. Doing that by hand would take forever.
Anybody getting their first Okatsune be sure that you push the locking arm all the way up when opening the pruners. If you don’t, they open and the arm is still at a 90-degree angle to the handle. Once you flip it up, it’s parallel to the handle.
Your pinky finger will get stuck between the locking arm and handle otherwise… and it hurts!
