How to Use a Saw to Prune
Hello, it’s Stephen Hayes of Fruitwise Heritage Apples again and we’re continuing our sort of tutorials on how to prune apple trees. We’re continuing this hopefully through the summer to show you all the different aspects of summer pruning as well as well with the pruning.
Right now, we’re looking at the saw. The pruning saw is very important. It is more important than secretaries really. The important things about the saw firstly, if it’s not sharp enough to do its job, if it’s not very sharp enough to hurt you very badly, it’s not fit for purpose. So you want a really sharp saw so you need to be very careful when you get out because I’ve noticed for—not to cut yourself with it. This is deadly sharp.
We use this Japanese Silky Fox Gomtaro apple saw. They’re very thin. They’re easily broken whenever you use them or when you cut them to back stroke. There is a branch here, it has fruited in the past but it’s too low. This has to come out and it’s got to come out here but I’ve chosen this particular branch just to show you a little bit how to use and not how to use the saw. So that the initial cuts that I’m making are not proper pruning cuts. They’re just to show you of not using the saw.
Okay, so let’s say we were going to cut here right. Now, you will notice that I’m not touching the tree. Now if at one hand, it wiggles around, that’s not good at all. It’s got to be stabilized. You can stabilize about holding it here or here, just imagine we will be taking this off. You can close it like that.
So carefully slide forward and then slide back. Now you can see that’s coming right through—two things, first it’s going right through in two cuts. Secondly, the saw has come through and it’s cut there as well which I didn’t really want. I didn’t want to damage that. So that’s something to bear in mind.
Now one way of avoiding the saw wheezing through is to go halfway through and then to turn it round, and then sneak it through the other side, you see. I’ll just shoot to do the same again here, halfway through and come from the other side, and then I saw carefully in there.
That’s done then. Another way which given the same thing is when you’re halfway through to just level the soil up-down like that. You’re not using a very strong stroke then I went through but I didn’t go a long way because I’ve gone through very slowly and carefully.
Again, note the action of the saw and you come from this from sideways. I’m not pulling down hard. That is not a chopper, it’s a saw. So I’m pulling back quite gently then concentrating in keeping the saw moving in a straight line. It’s not a knife, it’s a saw. So again, just gentle movements. You see how nice segments do these tears.
Now, I’ll show you a mistake that’s quite commonly made. Let’s imagine this was a heavy branch and we’re cutting through this and there’s a heavy weight pulling down here. Did you see that? That’s bad news, isn’t it? You’re cutting a heavy branch and you cut down and the weight of the branch pulls it down when the three quarters away through pulling out for great big piece of it underneath. Now that’s terrible and how can you avoid doing that? Easily, make it on the cut first. Now, if you want to because I can’t do that now, you see? It’s not going to do that. So just improvise to use your saw.
Now we’re going to make a definitive cut which is about two or three millimeters out. You can see there’s a color of wood down there. We don’t want to make it too big leaving a stab. That’s wrong because that will die or that maybe can get a disease. We don’t want to make it too close. I’m giving a wide area the slope of hills so why not make it up against this cut. The definitive pruning cut of a large branch. I’m slowing down now. So, that’s how to make that cuts, thank you.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services