We tend to have a lot of pruning chores in the garden especially in late winter and early
spring and you think a sharp pair of sheers or loppers is going to do the job a lot easier.
Your hands will tire less quickly and you will get the job done more quickly and its
just much more of a pleasure to use a sharp pair of sheers.
This is a pair of Felco sheers, this one has a rotating handle.
This handle rotates back and forth with your hand so if you are doing a lot of pruning
these will tend to be less stressful for you hands.
This pair has been sharpened nicely it's got a nice shiny bevel on the blade and I have
taken care to clean all of the sap that has collected on the blades over time.
A lot of plants like especially Rosemary and Eucalyptus and Pine really produce a lot of
sap and make your sheers really sticky and you'll get a lot of residue in here and that
tends to make your sheers not open and close easily.
You loose the spring action.
This pair of sheers also has to have its bevel sharpened quite a bit and the springs tend
to get very dirty and you will get a lot of dust and dirt that collect in the joints of
the pruner, so you want to make sure that you clean those up.
Same is true with your lopping sheers and with a pair of lopping shears like this you
need to do quite a bit of cleaning to get them ready to go.
What I like to use for a cleaning agent, actually ill first use a piece of sand paper and clean
off any sap and you want to use a fine sand paper.
This is a 400 grit, 300 or 400 grit will take off a lot of that built up material that gets
on your blades.
If you have a heavier level of dirt or even rusty sheers you may even want to use a small
wire brush.
And you can put a little bit of oil.
I like to use just the kitchen spray oil.
But again, if your pruners are very rusty or very dirty you might even want to use like
a three in one oil and I work those sheers back and forth and I'm going to be using a
wet stone to do the actual sharpening.
I like to keep it in a towel so it stays nice and clean.
Now this is a stone oil.
Now your stones have a fine side and a coarse side, usually the lighter side is going to
be your fine side.
You want to make sure your stone is really oiled.
You can see that that oil soaks into the stone.
And you want to use a special sharpening oil.
So you will start out with the more coarse side but I'm going to give this just a little
bit of scrub and clean up some of that dirt and dust that has collected in the nooks and
crannies there and wipe that off and then on your sharpening, your going to sharpen
just on the side of the bevel.
Make sure your stone is matching the same angle as the bevel that you have on the tool.
Do long straight strokes until you have a nice shine and nice clean edge.
You might need to use your stone on either side just to take off any burrs and then when
your out in the garden sharpening.
if you need to do just a little bit of touch up you can keep a little pocket pruner like
this or a little pocket stone in your pocket and just give it a nice couple of strokes
to keep it nice and clean.
You will do the same thing with scissors and sheers to keep it nice and clean so you can
do all of your gardening with a nice clean edge.
For Backyard Basics, I'm Trisha Shire, thanks for joining us.