Picking the perfect pruning saw

We like wilderness - or we should say - we don't like overly 'precise' gardening.  This isn’t entirely born out of laziness – whilst we can, of course, appreciate plants that have been pruned to be picture perfect, we just prefer nature to look a bit more, well, natural.  The Tinker and Fix garden is less about the harnessing of nature, and more about occasionally keeping it under control when it gets too wieldy.

And wieldy the garden has certainly got… so out comes the pruning saws. Remember - anything bigger than your little finger needs a saw (circa 2cm) – rather than tackling it with your secateurs. We stock three different pruning saws. Two from Niwaki – one that’s folding and one that’s not. As well as one from Opinel. All of them are excellent (we wouldn’t stock them otherwise). And we are also testing some other ones (watch this space – probably for autumn). 

So… how to pick the right pruning saw? Our preference is definitely one that folds – it just means you always have it to hand and therefore avoids the temptation of using your secateurs (and possibly doing damage to either the tree or the blade). After that, we think it’s personal preference of what feels right in the hand and the average size of what you are likely to be cutting. Edd’s preference is the Niwaki Moku (folding) because it fits his hand well and the longer blade suits the bigger stuff he tends to tackle.  My preference is the Opinel No.12 Pruning Saw because it just fits my hand really nicely as it’s a smaller, rounded handle – and although the blade is shorter it’s more than capable of tackling most jobs (and the bigger stuff I leave Edd – or the chainsaw!)

Hopefully the pictures will show you how they sit in each of our hands and the size difference in the blades. 

Or - Edd did an instagram video a while back which features the Niwaki pruning saw - so take a look if you want to know a bit more about this one. 

- Lou -