The Pruning Knife

Those who cannot afford to build a special fruit store and who have no suitable cellars will be glad to know that it is possible to store keeping varieties of apples like Bramley Seedling, Newton Wonder, Winston and Laxton Superb in clamps in a similar manner to potatoes.

When pruning always preferred what is called a fixed knife-blade because then there is no danger of it weakening or wobbling at all at the point where the blade is hinged to the handle. A pruning knife with a fixed blade, however, has to be carried in a leather holster from the belt. Few people will bother about this today.

Some pruners prefer to use an oil stone each evening when they return home and by this means they produce what is known as a chisel edge, the knife-blade being laid flat on one side and slightly tilted on the other. It is said that this chisel edge lasts longer than the normal gradual tapered edge which you get from the other method of sharpening.

The good pruner uses his knife for almost every job concerned with cutting wood, both in the summer and winter. By bending a medium-sized branch in the direction of the cut, it is surprising what a knife is able to do when the woody tissue is thus, so to speak, `opened up’. On the other hand, if the branch is bent in the opposite direction, it is quite impossible to cut off the branch because the wood binds.

It is best to store different varieties of apples in separate clamps even if this means making two or three of them in circles like tents.

It is when you use a tool regularly, oil it and take care of it, that it somehow becomes personal to you. You learn how best to sharpen it, it somehow fits your hand perfectly, it is of the right weight or it is ‘worn down’ by your use so that it fits snugly into the palm. A really good knife is a first-class investment.