Felco Secateurs Model 4 Standard - Review

As far as I'm concerned a good pair of secateurs is an essential item in any arborists tool box. I use mine at least a couple of times every week; on small reductions or thins, pruning young trees from the ground, formative pruning on newly planted trees even chopping stuff up smaller to bag up on 'through the house' jobs.

I've had these for about 10 months now and I'm pretty pleased with them, there a massive improvement on the pair of cheepo ones I had before.

The model 4 Felcos are a fairly no frills version but do everything you'd expect of them, they will cut up to 1" diameter branches (species depending) They cut clean with very little tearing of bark and splitting of the wood, this obviously increases with the larger branches/twigs. With smaller finger sized stuff cutting is pretty effortless and the curved blade and anvil prevent the piece from slipping, handy when your at full reach on the tips of a wet slippery Lime!

There is very little to go wrong with these secateurs, they've suffered a reasonable amount of abuse in the time I've been using them, been dropped plenty of times and have spent a lot of their life kicking around in the bottom of my climbing bag. They are showing very few signs of ware and the edge is just as keen as the day I brought them. At around the £30 mark they are a bit of an investment compared to a £5 blackspur pair, but assuming you don't loose them they should last 10 times as long. 

To be honest I don't use them quite as much as I should, often making do with my Silky for small diameter cuts that it really isn't suitable for. Having a pair of secateurs on you just gives you that increased level of accuracy and ability to leave some very tidy finishing cuts. 

I find the only down side to these is that they don't have any means of attaching a lanyard of any description which can be a bit of pain when in the tree. I've managed to solve this when I was given an old leather Felco holster that holds them nice and snug and has a fairly solid clip for attaching them to my harness with 

All in all pretty pleased with them and would recommend them to anyone looking to invest in a quality pair of secateurs. I would also recommend anyone starting out in Arb, looking to improve on their reductions to try taking a pair up and seeing if you find it any easier/notice a difference in quality. 

Silky Saw Natanoko, review and mod

I love my silky saw, I use it in 99% of the trees I work on, sometimes its all I use, especially on reductions. 

This isn't really going to be a fair review as I have only used a handful of different silky's, but that is mostly because once I used the Natanoko I knew there was no point in trying anything else, it is a monster. 

It cuts quickly and effortlessly, its wide set teeth are perfect for larger diameter branches both dead and alive. The long sightly curved blade means you remove a lot of material for every stroke, making cuts quicker and easier. The blade has a nice rigidity to it meaning when cutting at awkward angles it maintains its angle of cut, something cheeper saws struggle to do. 

Now I'm sure other Silky saws do all of these things, but for some reason I have never got on with them, I either find them too small, to curved or too flexible.

As for other makes, well I personally wouldn't bother, they are generally cheaper for a reason. Buy cheap buy twice. I used to have a samurai brand one and the scabbard broke within a few weeks and the blade dulled very quickly. I've also used the CEUK ones and they are no better, very flexible blades that struggle to cut in a straight line and just make it look hard work. 

There are only a few faults that I can think of, Its not the best for very small diameter stuff as the teeth are fairly aggressive and it can if your not careful leave a ragged cut or tear the bark. But if I'm doing a small reduction with lots of small diameter branches I almost always have my Felcos on me anyway. 

The second flaw is with the scabbard, the hole at the bottom is not really big enough and sawdust does tend to accumulate occasionally leading to it blocking and preventing the saw from seating properly. Although this is easily fixed with a stanley knife

I also found i didn't really like the way it hung from my harness, it was always at the wrong angle or twisting itself round making it tricky to return the saw, especially if cutting and holding. 

This was easily fixed by removing the clip that came with it, and replacing with some 6mm accessory cord, a small wire gate wild country biner and a Karabiner retention rubber

This keeps everything low profile, no knots as its held in place by friction, and the alinement of the karabiner means that when clipped into my gear loop the scabbard is flush with my leg

Only a little thing, but when you think how many times you have to get your silky out in a day it makes a huge difference if its always in the right place facing the right way

Petzl Caritool - large vs small

The Petzl Caritool is a superb addition to any harness (assuming it fits) and one that I for one would hate to be without.

I started off with the small version, as it was cheaper and I worried the large one would be too big and get hooked on branches all the time. Surprisingly I have found the opposite to be true, the small one is fairly weak and as there is not a great deal of tension in the sprung clip I found it was forever clipping itself to branches, usually at the most inopportune moment! This frequently led to it snapping or the clip popping off.

After going through 3 or 4 of these in the space of a few months, I decided to try the large Caritool, hoping its heavier weight rating would also mean it was slightly more robust. I have been proved right, and have yet to break one, despite nearly 2 years worth of use. Which for £12ish is pretty damn good.
It also has a stronger clip, meaning branches are less likely to clip themselves in (it still happens, but not nearly as often!)

I have mine attached to the right hand side of my harness, just off centre from my hip, I use it exclusively for clipping my saw up and have developed a technique to do this one handed, quickly and easily (more on this when I do a post about my saw strop)

As stated before its robust, well made and currently standing the test of time, putting up with considerable abuse and must have been clipped into thousands of times by now. My main criticisms are firstly that I'd happily trade some weight gain for a solid gate rather than wire, as you'd be amazed how frequently tiny little branches can wedge themselves inside the wire gate!

My second criticism is one that I have in part managed to solve and its probably more to do with compatibility to my harness than anything else, but I found that it would often turn its self upside down or move around the harness webbing, or slide upwards and the little clip wasn't really sufficient to keep it in place.

I solved this with the addition of a strip of tire inner tube, cut to twice the width of the harness webbing and with two slits, centred and cut slightly further apart than one width of webbing, the caritool is then poked through one slit, into the harness and the other end stretched and round the caritool, the two ends of the rubber then get folded round the back of the harness strap and hopefully everything then stays happily in place

Hopefully the pictures explain it better than my ramblings