Just my $0.02 on the grafting machines… I have looked at those on Amazon, too. I know the quality is poor and the blades will almost certainly dull soon, but for $20, I’m fine with that. For the limited number of grafts that I do, I think I can justify that price on what is basically a disposable item. The first few cuts with each blade should be clean enough from the reviews I have read. I never was great with the grafting knife, anyway. I can’t imagine I would be any worse with a $20 grafting machine…
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I have the Funteck 2-in-1 kit. I think it would work well for you. It is easy to use and fast. I use mine for about half of my grafts now, especially when the scion and rootstock are about the same diameter. Just remember to clean and disinfect it in between grafting sessions.
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well I gave it a try, and while I was able to make decent cuts with the grafting tool, I just couldn’t keep my hand steady enough to secure the scion wood to the rootstock tree (wild crabapple).
As a recap - I have a neurological condition called an essential tremor that prevents fine hand movements under many conditions. I thought with a grafting tool and the fact that I had a few wild crabapples growing on the property, I could do the work at a chest height where my tremor is more manageable, but when I went to find a suitable graft point, they were all over my head, where my tremor goes berserk. I kept dropping the scion wood or hitting the graft union and breaking it. I got one lined up once, but I couldn’t secure the graft union without it slipping and falling apart.
I still have the scion wood, in my fridge. not sure what I can/will do with it now. oh well
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hm, i have some ideas, maybe you could could up with a method using a staple gun or a tapener to secure it a bit so you can use both hands to secure it better
I would help but am not driving at the moment. What’s trunk diameter at chest height?
maybe between 8 to 12 inches.
In the fall I had one tree confirmed, and 1 suspected crabapple, but now that all my trees are in bloom, I have confirmed I have 3 wild crabapple trees on my property.
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Could your wife or kids place or tape the scion? I don’t know how old your kids are or if your wife is interested in helping.
Also, I’ve done this on a ladder and it sucks. I have scaffolding and while it’s a pain to setup and take down, I will sometimes do that instead. Getting some is something to consider if you do a lot of things on ladders. The added benefit is that you can add and make scaffolding go higher so you’re not working above your head.
Now that I’ve used one of the tools you’re trying, I can tell you I find it very difficult to get the scion to stay in place while I tape it and I do not have a tremor or anything. I can tell you what I ended up doing and you can try it.
I tore my rotator cuff last summer and was finding cutting scions this season really hard (and grafting overhead was not great either). I decided to try a tool like the one you got and I got a cheap one off amazon. It does cut really well and mostly seems great, but I have found it very difficult to hold the tool in place when I cut and have missed the center a bunch - and then I also had the problem with holding it in place while I secured it.
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Pre cut a piece of electrical tape. Fat kind is best, but I’ve made 3/4" work. Alternately, get a kid’s glue stick and put kid’s washable glue on some parafilm. I’ve never tried this with other glue but it’d probably work as long as it’s tacky and not drippy.
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measure (with my super cheap harbor freight plastic calipers) to find a spot on the scion wood and rootstock that are about the same diameter. I didn’t obsess over it, but the calipers were what I had at hand. You could also do what clark suggested to me once, and have some little wrenches (5/16", 1/4", 3/16") that you slide up and down till you find two spots with the desired width this is probably easier if you have a tremor.
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Cut rootstock (I find it harder to cut - since it’s on a tree- so if I screw up and have to cut again at a slightly different width, I can make the scion match. But it does mean going up and down the ladder more if you do it in this order)
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cut scion and place on sticky tape
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slide scion onto rootstock, using the tape to keep it from going too far and to hold it in place. You could even make an X with the tape so you had a long part vertically if you wanted it more held on.
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Wrap shorter end (doesn’t matter if it’s not tidy as long as it’s on there) **
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Wrap longer end (which doesn’t have to be tidy at all - it’s just there to hold it in place for now)**
** honestly, I don’t think it matters if you didn’t wrap the tape and instead made a tape “taco”. Especially, if you secure it afterwards with something. Or it might be fine with just the tape taco.
- Optional: Take a cut rubber band or plastic strip or more electrical tape or something else kind of stretchy and make a couple wraps around the thing and tie. I say it’s optional because I’ve definitely accidently or by laziness not done this and it’s been fine (for pear grafts, which I know are ridiculously easy but apple is second easiest I think). I do think securing it would be better.
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I’m sure my wife would do it if I asked her, but I don’t want her to. She’s not supposed to be doing a lot of reaching above her head due to spinal surgery she had a few years ago. Her condition is degenerative.
My kids are way too young to be capable of doing this. They are five and nine.
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9 seems doable without the cutting part
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I’m not sure how a 9-year-old is supposed to frame work graft a full-grown crabapple tree with branches that are over 6 ft off the ground.
And I’m also not sure how a stranger is supposed to know the capabilities of a 9-year-old better than her own father.
someone gave me this around my birthday and i can’t use it because of my eyesight. i have to get my face right up on whatever I’m doing to do it, so I’ve gone back to using a box cutter for grafting.
it has all the little cutting things for different shapes with it.
do you want it/if anyone wants it I’ll send it along to try. there’s no brand name anywhere on the thing. to be clear I’ll just send it if you want to try it out you can keep it, or pass it along if you don’t want to
it cut through some scionwood pretty easily without much force needed.
if you want to experiment with taking a thing apart or taping extensions to it or otherwise experimentally destroying a graftibg tool to see what might work with a better one, this might save a buck.
I’ll send it to anyone who might need it too if you don’t particularly want it, shipping is cheap you don’t gotta pay me anything
i edited to be more clear but need to add that I’ve got frozen shoulder so i am having similar issues with reaching up to do higher grafts. i got a cheap stepladder so I’m always looking down at what I’m doing, it has helped a lot. i also use a piece of tape on the graft, i stick a little square of duct tape to the back side of a graft that’s hard to reach, put the Scion in and push it against that tape. it’s kind of holds it still for me so i don’t need 3 hands or a steady grip
also, everyone of us has something wrong with us. everyone is disabled. either we’re busted up somehow or we’re stupid. people don’t realize disability is a constant! if they think they’re not disabled then they’re either stupid or “lucky so far”
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I can’t speak to techniques that might work for you or to living with neuro issues, but I know a lot about caring for those that do live with them and just want to acknowledge the difficulties and hope you’re at least able to find some therapies or routines that help ease the challenges
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Im sure bark graft was mentioned before, but as a novice grafter that is the only one that took for me to date. I added Bartlet and D’Anjou to a Callery pear. This was by far the easiest in my opinion because of the thickness. I used two large zip ties to keep the contact tight after wrapping them. I also made the cut in the trunk higher than one branch. I am trying to use a tool this year to see if that helps me any. Try what you feel comfortable with and don’t worry there are a lot of us it doesn’t work for.
Cheers
