Secateurs and shears explained: bypass, anvil and what each one is for

There is that one moment when you realise your secateurs are past it. You set them on a finger thick shoot, squeeze, and instead of a clean cut you hear a crunch. The shoot hangs on by half, the bark is peeled back. Four weeks later the wound has sunk in brown instead of callusing over.

That is almost never about price. Usually it is the wrong design for that particular wood, a blunt blade, or half a millimetre of play in the pivot. A good pair of secateurs is a wearing part with spares available, and it will stay with you for twenty years.

One thing at a time: which design belongs on which wood, where hand pruners, loppers and hedge shears reach their limits, and why the ten minutes after the job matter more than any amount you spend at the till.

Bypass or anvil: the difference is in the tissue

Bypass secateurs have a curved, sharpened upper blade and a wider counter blade. As they close, the two pass each other like a pair of scissors and the shoot is guided from both sides. What is left is a smooth face with an undamaged cambium layer, and that layer is exactly what forms the callus.

Anvil secateurs have only one cutting blade, which travels onto a flat plate and presses the wood against it just before it parts. On dry wood that hardly matters, it snaps anyway. On a shoot still carrying sap the bark bursts open underneath, and the wound only calluses in from the sides.

Bypass is the default

Anything alive that is meant to keep growing gets a bypass cut: roses, raspberries, perennials, young fruit shoots, lavender, vines. If you only buy one pair, buy this one.

Because the blades pass each other, they ask for clean technique. Twisting or levering bends the blade, and a bent bypass blade crushes just like an anvil.

Anvil secateurs are not the lesser tool for all that. On dead twigs, woody perennial stems and everything headed for the shredder pile they save you effort, because the lever works against a solid surface.

Where hand pruners run out

Above roughly two centimetres in diameter, hand pruners stop being fun. You lever, the blade twists, and you end up with a frayed shoot or a bent tool. From here loppers take over, again in both designs.

Two mechanisms save you effort. Geared loppers carry a gear train between handle and blade that lengthens the travel and multiplies the force. With ratchet loppers you cut in stages: squeeze, the ratchet holds the ground you gained, take a fresh grip, squeeze again. A relief on a tough branch, fiddly on thin wood.

From roughly four centimetres the wood belongs to a pruning saw. A folding saw with pull stroke teeth leaves a smoother face than a lopper working beyond its limit. More on the order of work when shaping a crown in fruit tree pruning for beginners.

One note on timing, because it often gets lost: the February cut is for pome fruit, so apple, pear and quince. Stone fruit such as sweet cherry, plum and peach you prune after harvest in summer, because the wounds seal badly in cool, damp weather.

Hedge shears: by hand or by motor

Hand held hedge shears with long handles and ground wavy blades are quicker on a small hedge than you would expect. Up to about ten metres of length and chest height you need no motor at all, and for clipped box spheres they are the more precise choice. Long runs of hornbeam, privet or hawthorn are a full day's work by hand.

Cordless hedge trimmers have replaced petrol models in the home garden. Look at the blade length, 50 to 60 centimetres is plenty, and at the tooth spacing: the wider it is, the thicker the shoots the machine will take, but the coarser the finish gets as well. Anything you shred instead of severing turns brown and stays that way.

Running a motor in a residential area comes with fixed hours. In Germany the 32nd Federal Immission Control Ordinance bans powered hedge trimmers there all day on Sundays and public holidays, and on working days between 8 pm and 7 am. Local by laws and allotment rules often add a midday quiet period on top, so it is worth a look at the rules for your own site.

Specialists and the right size

Three specialists earn their place once you grow the crop that calls for them. Rose pruners are slim bypass hand pruners with a narrow head, so you can reach a bud between the thorns. Vine pruners carry a short, pointed head and therefore fit into tight forks. Flower or grip snips have a thin, straight blade and a holding spring that grips the cut stem so it does not drop into the border. What else belongs in a basic kit is in tools for beginners.

More important than any specialist is the size. A pair that is too big forces you to open the handles with your fingertips, and then the power is missing at the end of the cut. The test in the shop takes ten seconds: you have to be able to close the handles with your whole palm and release the catch with the thumb of that same hand. Left handers need a mirrored model, otherwise the ball of the thumb pushes the blades apart, the pivot develops play, and the cut frays.

Spare parts: the criterion nobody mentions on the shelf

Two pairs at the same price can be decades apart, and you cannot tell from the packaging. The part most often lost is the spring, usually in the lawn, usually in November. Next in line is the stop buffer, which wears down. Once it is gone, the blades start to nick.

1. Look for the exploded diagram

   Good manufacturers put a drawing with numbered parts online. If it is missing, the spring will be missing later too.

2. Check what kind of spring it uses

   A coil spring seated in the pivot gets lost far less often than an exposed wire spring.

3. Order a spare spring straight away

   It costs very little and it will be in the drawer when you need it in February.

Care: the ten minutes after the job

The most common reason for badly cutting secateurs is not wear, it is resin. After an afternoon on fruit trees the blade carries a sticky film of sap, bark dust and resin. It makes the tool stiff, and underneath it the rust begins.

Resin first, then oil

Resin does not dissolve in water, it dissolves in methylated spirits, isopropanol or a dedicated resin remover. A soaked cloth, a few seconds to work, then the film comes off under light pressure.

Only then does the oil go on. A drop of sewing machine oil on the pivot, a thin film on the blade, that is all it takes. Too much oil attracts dust and makes things worse next time.

You need to touch up the edge once the blade starts pushing thin shoots instead of cutting them. On a bypass pair you only hone the outside of the curved blade, the flat inner face stays untouched, otherwise the blades no longer bed against each other. The angle is whatever is already there, usually 20 to 25 degrees. Three to five strokes with a diamond file or a whetstone, working from the pivot to the tip. In detail in sharpening and caring for garden tools.

Once a year, ideally when you put tools away for winter, strip the tool completely: undo the bolt, separate the blades, clean the pivot, check buffer and spring, sharpen, grease, reassemble. Tighten it at the end so the blades run without play but the tool still springs open on its own.

Disinfecting: when it is compulsory

Between healthy plants you do not need to disinfect. With two diseases, though, your secateurs become the vehicle, and then the quick wipe matters more than any cutting angle.

Fireblight (Erwinia amylovora) is a bacterial disease of the pome fruit family: pear, apple and quince, plus the ornamentals hawthorn, cotoneaster, firethorn, rowan and photinia. The cotoneaster on the bank is the one people tend to overlook. Typical signs are shoot tips that discolour brown black almost overnight, look scorched and curl over into a hook. European canker (Neonectria ditissima) is a fungus that forms sunken, raised wound sites and enters through fresh pruning cuts. Cut affected areas back well into healthy wood.

Both hang on one condition that no amount of disinfecting replaces: prune on dry days. Fireblight and European canker enter through the fresh wound, and in wet weather that wound stays open and damp for hours. In rain or fog, every cut on a fruit tree is an invitation.

Even with no active infection, it is a habit worth having: give the blade a quick wipe when you move from one woody plant to the next. Spirits and a cloth cost nothing. Which rose needs which cut is covered in pruning roses by type.

What got cut where and when disappears from your head remarkably fast. In the Gartenkern garden journal you record which tree you worked on and when you last honed the blade. After three years you can see which shrub crops better after a summer cut and what is due in February. No guide can hand you that knowledge, it only grows in your own garden.