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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.