PRUNING SAWS 131 



workman does occasionally find a place where nothing is quite so 

 satisfactory as a good knife in removing side shoots from the 

 trunk of a young'tree, for example. 



Pruning Saws. It is a singular thing, but the writer has 

 never found a pruning saw upon the market that exactly suited 

 him for serious orchard work. The fact that nine-tenths of the 

 pruning saws on the market are of the two-edged type lends 

 strength to the argument that there are at least very few good 

 pruning saws to be had (Fig. 59). This two-edged pruning saw 

 is a relic of barbarism which probably comes down from the days 

 of the two-edged sword when men were not particular how much 

 they mutilated the remains of their victims. Certainly no man 

 who has ever done any pruning, and who has any regard for the 

 tree he is at work upon, would ever use such a saw the second 



FIG. 59. The two-edged saw. An abomination that ought to be banished from the orchard. 



time if it could be avoided. After a good deal of thought and 

 some experimenting, and after many consultations with practical 

 orchard men, the writer has developed the series of saws shown 

 in the accompanying pictures (Figs. 60, 61 and 62), which, if 

 they are not entirely satisfactory, are at least a great improve- 

 ment over anything that could be bought in the open market. 

 They were all made up on special orders, by one of our large 

 saw manufacturers. 



The largest saw is designed for renovation work primarily, 

 and any one who has " fiddled along " with one of the ordinary 

 small pruning saws, or who has in desperation resorted to a 

 big, clumsy carpenter's saw, will be delighted with the way this 

 saw works. It was modelled after an old carpenter's saw that 

 had been filed so often it had been reduced nearly to a point, 



