I wish I could offer you a before and after picture of our tree, but in what can only be described as a miracle, my husband tackled the job of pruning our branches before I had the chance to nag him about it take photos. Being eager to do work around the house is such a rarity that I actually inspected the trunk of the tree to see if it had a Virgin Mary image growing on it. It turns my husband’s inspiration to get out and tidy up our branches was not from the divine entities above, but from the people at Fiskars who designed our new Pruning Stik Telescoping Tree Pruner.
The tree in our backyard is healthy, perhaps too healthy. When we first saw our home this spring, the tree merely cast a pleasant shade over our shed. By the end of the summer, we couldn’t even see the shed through the overhanging branches, and, a big patch of grass was refusing to thrive due to its inability to get sunlight. I suspected the neighbourhood squirrels, keen for a home upgrade, had been shooting steroids into the roots. In any case, we were looking for a simple tool we could safely use to keep the tree at bay. After a bit of online research, we settled on Fiskar’s 12′ Pruning Stik Telescoping Tree Pruner with the “Ropeless PowerStroke”.
The design is more toy than toil, hence why my husband was so eager to bust it out and put it to work. In fact, he later said the hardest part about the pruning job was getting the Fiskar’s Pruning Stik out of its dastardly plastic packaging. Once he had freed it, he ran out to our backyard (yes, ran!) and simply and smoothly started to remove our encroaching branches using the sliding action of the PowerStroke.
It cuts “like buttah”, he said over and over again until he eventually did the entire Coffee Talk with Linda Richmond skit from the early ’90s, thoroughly convincing our neighbours that he’s nuts. But, indeed, the rotating steel bypass blades went through the branches “like buttah” without a whole lot of strength or skill required by the user. A 15″ saw blade can also be installed on the pruner to deal with thicker, larger branches.
The pruner isn’t truly ropeless – the chord is hidden inside the pruner’s corrosion-resistant casing, but the design ensures your experience is a tangle-free one, which can make all the difference between someone eager to do the job and someone who lets their tree take over the entire backyard and become a squirrel fortress. Telescoping the pruner to 12′ and then back down to a smaller length was also “like buttah”. In the end, the only ones who were verklempt were the squirrels.
You can find the Fiskars 9240 Telescoping Pruning Stik
I have had the shorter version for 15 years now and I use it for tree pruning but it’s best feature is being able to use it close to the ground. The head angles so you can use it to clip any type of wood saplings, brush or heavy weeds right at the ground level.
It will handle anything smaller than your thumb. It will clip off stuff a brush head on your string trimmer won’t cut easily. It’s one of the hidden “gems” in the landscape tool world.
Thanks for your input Paul, great to have your feedback and I’m glad you had a positive experience too!
Been using the shorter version for a couple years now. I love it. I’ve been a fan of most of the new Fiskars stuff. They know how to make stuff sharp and cut so it’s great! Ours recently meet it’s maker when using it help guide down a large branch that twisted and crushed it into the sidewalk. We will be buying another one, maybe the tall version this time.