This post addresses pruning loppers that are two or three feet long but also applies somewhat to one hand pruners and pole pruners.<\/p>\n
The basic rule for using a lopper is: NEVER twist the lopper.\u00a0 If the lopper does not cleanly cut all the way through a branch and sticks, rotate it back and forth around the branch in the plane of the cut to get it unstuck.\u00a0 It is tempting to give it a little twist to snap off the branch or pry it out — resist that temptation.\u00a0 If not you will often chip the cutting blade and ruin it.\u00a0 The cutting blade of a lopper is very narrow and very hard in order to make it cut easily.\u00a0 It is immensely strong in the direction of the cut but quite brittle against side loads, which is what makes twisting or prying so risky.<\/p>\n
There are three basic types of loppers.\u00a0 The first is the anvil style that pinches the branch with a sharp cutter against an anvil jaw with a brass or polymer insert to keep from dulling the cutter.\u00a0 The cutter and anvil are usually straight.\u00a0 The main problem is that if you try to cut a green branch of even moderate size it tends to squirt out of the jaws.\u00a0 These also often take a greater amount of effort than other designs.<\/p>\n
The second type is a \u201cBird\u2019s Head\u201d bypass lopper.\u00a0 In these, the curved cutting blade \u201cbypasses\u201d the fixed blade like a pair of scissors.\u00a0 This usually results in lower cutting effort for a given design.\u00a0 But, the curve of the cutting blade matches the curve of the fixed blade. As a result green branches tend to squirt out of this style too.<\/p>\n
The third type is a bypass lopper with a cutting blade shape that is more squared off than that of the fixed blade.\u00a0 This captures the branch to be cut, eliminating any possibility of it squirting out.\u00a0 As a bypass lopper it cuts easily and the captured branch is held in an optimum position for the cut.\u00a0 Several manufacturers make these.\u00a0 The Fiskars PowerGear\u00ae and Power-Lever\u00ae families are good examples of the type.<\/p>\n
A major consideration is replacement parts.\u00a0 The part that generally wears out, even with the best of care, is the cutting blade and a worn or chipped cutter is an exercise in frustration.\u00a0 If your lopper has replacements available they will be much cheaper than buying a new lopper.\u00a0 Some manufacturers sell repair parts on their web sites.\u00a0 As an example, a search for \u201clopper parts\u201d on the Fiskars web site returns various cutter blades for current and past loppers.\u00a0 (It also lists a number of lower cost loppers that are still in production.)\u00a0 Drilling down into likely pictures and descriptions yields model numbers and reference dimensions so you can be sure you are ordering the right part.\u00a0 A replacement cutter is $8 for a $46 lopper and $4 for a $25 lopper, much better than a whole new lopper from the hardware store.\u00a0 Buy a couple while you\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post addresses pruning loppers that are two or three feet long but also applies somewhat to one hand pruners and pole pruners. The basic rule for using a lopper is: NEVER twist the lopper.\u00a0 If the lopper does not cleanly cut all the way through a branch and sticks, rotate it back and forth … Continue reading “Pruning Loppers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-loppers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irrelevant-tech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}