What I Learned Today

I learned that though these are loppers:

This is a lopper:

Loppers aren't like scissors or pliers.  A pair of loppers is actually 2 of them, which makes a lot more sense.  What good is one scissor or one plier anyway?

I first bought an Ace compound anvil lopper a year or 2 ago at Ace Hardware (appropriately).  It's the one on the lower left in the top set of pictures.  It's still in good shape, but the arms are getting a little close together when the jaws are closed all the way.  I think it's because I tried to bite off too many large-diameter dead buckthorn branches.  Live branches close to 2-inches in diameter can be cut with this thing, but it's better to cut dead branches that big with a bow saw or just snap them off if you can.

So late this summer I bought a Corona lopper at another hardware store and found that these 2 loppers are very similar, apparently made from mostly identical parts, down to the color of the fiberglass handles. One exception is the anvil, which has an overhanging nose-like appendage on the Ace lopper (to keep branches from sliding out as they are lopped).  This feature helps a little on larger branches, but it gets in the way a bit when biting away at a honeysuckle stump.  Another difference is the black handle-cushions, which as you can see on my 2-year old Ace lopper are still in good shape, but on the newer Corona lopper the much softer sponge-like foam started to get torn up by thorns and twigs right away, one so badly that I ended up ripping it off as you can see in the lower right photo.  But that's mainly a cosmetic problem.  I've considered putting some handlebar tape on it to spruce it back up.

So, I wouldn't recommend one of these loppers over the other,  but I would recommend using a good heavy-duty compound anvil lopper instead of a bypass lopper (the kind with the scissor action).

 30-inch Bow Saw

I was about to recommend this 30-inch bow saw that I bought from Traditional Woodworker in Texas, but it appears that they just removed it from their web site's list of bow saws.  (They must have made an exclusivity deal with Bahco.)  This was a no-name saw from Italy, and it's quite stiff.  I've found that proper tension on the blade is important.  I have an older more flexible 30-inch saw that is really hard to use, even with a new blade, because the blade can curve within the saw cut, causing it to bind.

One of my smaller bow saws has a tension adjustment, so based on my experience with my flimsy old 30-inch saw, I cranked the tension up real high, but found that too much tension also causes a binding problem when the saw is not held parallel to the cut, as is often necessary when working between branches.  That saw also has a hand grip and protector, to prevent smashed knuckles I guess.  I didn't find that useful at all.  I use different hand positions on the saw depending on my angle to the tree I'm cutting, so the grip and protector just got in the way.  In fact, since I can use a lopper on many branches, much if not most of my cutting is done at the base of the tree, trying to leave as little stump as possible.  There I usually use two hands: one on the bend of the frame, and one where the blade attaches to the frame.  I often start out actually holding the blade itself so that I can twist it to control the angle of the cut (wearing leather gloves of course).

 

Those are just observations from my short personal experience with bow saws and loppers.