I tend to take reviews from magazines such as GW and Which? with a pinch of salt. I don't know about GW but Which? especially are renowned for leaning their judgement on how much the particular brand pays to advertise with them.
There doesn't seem to be much difference between the Darlac, Spear and Jackson and Felco no2?? Do they just copy each other?
As for Niwaki, unfortunately I have always had a dislike for "fake Japanese" brands. I mean enterprises that are started from Western europeans and given a Japanese name and then premium prices are slapped on. This tends to be generally a British phenomenon, perhaps due to the links and love that this country has with and for Japanese culture.
So i have just gone for the tried, tested and trusted Felco No2. Managed to get them from Amazon for £38 which isnt a bad price by the looks of it. Hopefully my hand will also like them as much as my eyes.
The only thing left to get after this will be a pair of snips for finer work.
This thread made me buy new secateurs lol I've gone for the Darlac. They seem really comfortable and have a 2-position safety catch for small and large hands. The "smaller" position suits me better and I only have to use the larger one if I'm trimming a really large branch. I didn't want to spend £38 on the felco secateurs so went with these at £24.99. I like the fact that they are a UK company too.
I've also just gone for a pair of Darlac secateurs, the DP1631 Expert range for left handers. Just £16.49, which seems me to be astonishingly good value.
The pair of Darlac 1631 secateurs I bought were wrongly listed so the order was cancelled. I found somewhere selling two pairs of brand new in packaging old stock, Darlac 1631 secateurs for £22 posted. They arrived last week and I can honestly say that the quality is absolutely superb. These are secateurs made to last a lifetime. I'm very happy indeed with them. Highly recommended if anyone is looking for a pair. I should add that these particular ones are for a left hander.
It's really important to try before you buy. I can't use Felco, even the smallest open too wide for me to operate with one hand. I worked as a gardener and had several pairs of different makes, including Darlac, which I liked. For me, the most important features are: fits into my hand when fully open, so I can close it with my "cutting hand"; has a catch which I can operate with my thumb, so again, my non-cutting hand can be holding the thing I want to cut; bright coloured handles so when I put them down in a bush I can find them again...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
My favoured secateur design are the full Japanese steel, simple two-piece bypass design with the safety-pin spring. The cutting blades are atleast 4mm thick with a long lasting razor sharp edge.
The cutting action is more direct and is akin to a surgical precision instrument than a general gardening tool.
I find that compound designs which incorporate aluminium handles with replaceable blades to have a very vague cutting action. They also develop a lot of slop over time as the hard steel screws wear away the soft aluminium threaded recesses - this is especially true with the catch screw and blade screws.
Plus, being a compound design with multiple components means that there are multiple points of failure.
If the specification says that the cutting capacity is 1 inch (25.4mm) then I expect the tool to be able to cut a 1 inch branch without having to resort to loppers, and this is how I tend to use secateurs. Consequently, 12 Felcos and numerous cheaper clones have died over the span of 5 years as a result. The jaws holding the blades often broke where the aluminium was thinnest.
I bought a job lot of gardening tools about 8 years ago, sight unseen, hoping for digging tools (which I got) but also got 3 big boxes of secateurs into the bargain. That was how the secateurs came about in case you're wondering.
Btw, on Japanese two-piece secateurs, unless the blades are really rusty (stainless steel versions are available), the nut and bolt holding the blades together is meant to stay fixed on. That is, the blades should be sharpened without removing the factory fitted nut and bolt. This ensures zero daylight between the blades when they bypass and that the nut never works loose during use.
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The cutting action is more direct and is akin to a surgical precision instrument than a general gardening tool.
I find that compound designs which incorporate aluminium handles with replaceable blades to have a very vague cutting action. They also develop a lot of slop over time as the hard steel screws wear away the soft aluminium threaded recesses - this is especially true with the catch screw and blade screws.
Plus, being a compound design with multiple components means that there are multiple points of failure.
If the specification says that the cutting capacity is 1 inch (25.4mm) then I expect the tool to be able to cut a 1 inch branch without having to resort to loppers, and this is how I tend to use secateurs. Consequently, 12 Felcos and numerous cheaper clones have died over the span of 5 years as a result. The jaws holding the blades often broke where the aluminium was thinnest.
I bought a job lot of gardening tools about 8 years ago, sight unseen, hoping for digging tools (which I got) but also got 3 big boxes of secateurs into the bargain. That was how the secateurs came about in case you're wondering.
Btw, on Japanese two-piece secateurs, unless the blades are really rusty (stainless steel versions are available), the nut and bolt holding the blades together is meant to stay fixed on. That is, the blades should be sharpened without removing the factory fitted nut and bolt. This ensures zero daylight between the blades when they bypass and that the nut never works loose during use.