@Hillbillyhort
Exactly. It makes quick work of something that would take me forever and a lot of muscle . . . (That I don’t have!).
Try the pruning blades, if you haven’t. Mine is 9" long - so you don’t have to bang the ‘foot’. And I know what you mean . . . about arthritis. Just all that cutting - even with ‘young’ hands - can bother you. Why aggravate and risk injuring our hands? Carpal Tunnel and all of that . . .
And the pruning blade has a nice narrowing tip - so you can get into those tight places.
I love it! I just bought one (mine was the first post). And HomeDepot has it on sale right now - till Jan 28th. Treat yourself, if you can . . . Milwaukee is a great brand. I wish I’d done this a couple of years ago. Trying to get into those ‘between the branches’ cuts . . . I ended up nicking the bark - and could have used the power saw and done a neater job.
@BobC
" My experience is that my Silky pruning saw works just as good or better."
Hand saws may be easy to use if you are a ‘MuscleMan’. But hand saws are difficult for me to use. Still takes more ‘elbow grease’ than this girl’s got in her!
Well . . . I was going to say something about ‘being a gurl’ . . . but didn’t want the harrassment police to come and get me!
But, you know what I was trying to say!
I use my easy start 16” chainsaw for all my medium orchard work, like topworking, heavy limbs, clean up. Converted this saw to a 14” pico blade, super thin one and no oil. It flies through wood clean and fast.
My orchard is getting mature enough that when I take out an old tree it is a lot of work with just my hand saw. I have an old electric (corded) chainsaw which is not particularly fast, but it is at least faster than doing it by hand. The cord is a big pain though so I hardly ever use it.
I also have a battery-operated reciprocating saw so I thought I would try it out as an easier alternative to dragging around the chainsaw cord. With the standard tree-pruning blades it worked OK, but not really any faster than my hand saw. The blades are more like the old double-pull tree saw blades, not like the new Japanese-style hand saw blades. So I looked around and found that Lee Valley is now selling a Japanese-style blade for reciprocating saws:
I recently got one of these and am really impressed! It cuts about twice as fast as the standard pruning blades. They are more expensive, but as was mentioned in another thread I sharpen these Japanese-style blades and they seem to last a long time that way. I have a Bahco hand saw from 15 years ago with 90% of the teeth still razor-sharp.
The only downside looks to be battery life, for bigger trees you can go through a whole battery on one tree. There are cheap replacement batteries on Amazon now (for my DeWalt saw anyway) so for most jobs I should be covered.
But hand saws are difficult for me to use. Still takes more ‘elbow grease’ than this girl’s got in her!
