Wasted $80 on a cheap pruning shear sharpener off Amazon

Bought this no-name sharpener kit last month thinking itd save me time between sharpening jobs. Big mistake. It actually messed up the edge on my Felco 2s so bad I had to send them in to get professionally reground. Cost me $35 for that fix plus lost 4 days of work without my favorite shears. Anyone else get burned by those gimmicky sharpeners or am I just unlucky?

4 comments

4 Comments

margaret_gonzalez251mo ago

...and of course I bought the same kind of thing last month thinking I was being clever and saving money. My pruners now cut about as well as a butter knife on a good day. I ended up going back to just using a flat file and some patience, which is way more boring but at least it doesn't make things worse. Guess we both learned that lesson the expensive way, huh.

gavin_kelly9129d ago

Oh totally, my buddy Mark did the exact same thing last spring. He bought this cheapo pruner off some random website because it was half the price of the Fiskars ones. First day using it, the blade actually bent when he tried to cut a branch that was barely thicker than his thumb. He spent the next hour trying to bend it back with pliers and cursing at it while I just stood there with my plain old file, not even doing anything fancy, just getting the job done. He ended up borrowing my file anyway and still had to buy the real pruners the next week. So yeah, the lesson is basically "buy once or buy forever," but I guess we all gotta get burned a few times before it sticks.

gavin_kelly911mo ago

Yeah, that "saving money by buying a cheap version first" thing is such a trap. It's like we all have to learn the hard way that paying twice for something (or getting mad at a tool that just doesn't work) actually costs way more than just buying the decent one upfront. Seems like it applies to everything from pruners to phone chargers, honestly.

lilykelly29d ago

My buddy Tom dropped $60 on one of those combo sharpener kits from Amazon and it straight up ruined his vintage Corona pruners he got from his grandpa. The little ceramic wheel thing stripped the edge so bad it looked like a saw blade after he ran it through like 3 times. He was so pissed he threw the whole kit in the trash and now he just uses a basic stone like his grandpa did.