Nancy from Fareham has posed a question. She wants to buy a new pair of loppers to tidy up her garden and wanted to know the difference and between a pair of bypass loppers, as we’ve got here, and slightly heavier duty anvil cutters.

Well Nancy, it’s quite easy. The cutters on this pair of anvil loppers here are a bit like you’d get on a pair of pruners if the handle came to about here and basically they’ve got a very sharp cutting edge and it bypasses the bottom blade. So they’re very sharp and if you’ve got smallish branches as I’ve got here, you always cut branches on an angle so the water runs off and they don’t rot. For smallish branches, even if this were the size, they cut through very easily. If you tried using the bypass loppers on something which isn’t particularly thick but this is quite a hard wood and it’s what, 25mm diameter, you’ll struggle with a pair of bypass cutters because you’re right up there and you might well struggle.

If you use now a pair of anvil cutters. This is the anvil, a bit like you’d have on a farrier or on a metal work bench and it’s got a blade here, double sided, and it hits the anvil and cuts. So now I’ve got this piece of log which is 25 mm, nearly 30mm. You place it in the jaw and literally it’s cut through with no effort at all, very sharp.

The other benefit with these anvil loppers, you can telescope the handle to increase the leverage so you can reach up higher but also you could cut something even 45 – 60mm because you’ve got the extra leverage straight through, no problem.

I hope that’s of assistance, head over to amtechdiy.com and you can ask us anything else here.