Hi, I'm Nick Bonner from tree stuff.com and we're going to look at some of the different hand saws that are available for professional arborists. There's a lot of different ones we've chosen to focus primarily on silky and notch today, silky is by far the best handsaw in the world without any question, and the notch option that we have to show you is a pretty good value, and definitely not as expensive as some of the silky saws.

The ubiquitous silky is the zubat. This is the one that made Silky famous. This is by far the best selling saw in the world. It comes with a 13 inch blade. It's got the razor sharp teeth, all the impulse hardening, you've got your three rows of teeth with all the different facets. these bad boys are the best. It's not as light or as slim as some of the other ones. It doesn't have as big of a blade as some of the other ones. That's a really nice option. And certainly the one that you see people buy in the most of the handsaw that I used when I was a field arborist was the Sugoi. I like this one because it has this big hook on the end. I actually dulled this down myself with a file it's meant for cutting binds, which it does really well, or suckers, but I filed it down so I could grab my rope with it.

I really like the exaggerated trigger grip on this one and the large length. This also has the larger style teeth, which are going to cut more, more aggressively. These types of answers are divided into a couple of classifications. Over here we have mostly curved blades. And over here we have some straight blades. So the ones that I've shown so far are all curved. This is the sugoi. The sugoi comes in straight and curved and Then a bunch of different sizes, you see that this has a much smaller blade, it's a little more flexible, a little more detail oriented, these have become very popular. And they're they're very nice.

Curved blades are definitely more aggressive than flat blades. Because of the downward pressure of the curve pulling, you're always cutting and you're not cutting on a flat, so you're really using the mechanical advantage of the blade to do the work. flat blade saws are flat saws, not curved saws, straight saws are more precise. You can use these to hand top out a tree and cut a very accurate notch with an accurate back cut. That's going to give you the hinge you want. And these are also nicer for fitting into small spaces, especially on ornamental trees. So there's definitely a pluses and minuses to having a curved or a straight blade. This is the guitar Oh in two different lengths here. These come again in a variety of tooth size. So you'll see these are small teeth, or they're listed as medium. And if you compare that to a larger tooth, there's a clear difference in the tooth sizes, right? So that's definitely something to look at.

As you're choosing a saw. If you want a more precise cut, if you're working on ornamentals, or very detailed hand pruning at eye level, you'll probably want a smaller tooth profile if you're operating. You know, on big Deadwood making large cuts, you probably want a more aggressive tooth profile so that you're cutting more faster and using less energy. One of the things that sets silky saws apart especially is the scabbards. This Zoo bat has three rollers inside of it. You can see why here, one here, and another one on the inside. Some of the more advanced, tsurugi hand songs have six rollers in them, or four, and you see that there's actually rollers here, here and on the inside. One of the things that I really like about the saws that Silky makes is they all have some type of protrusion on the front, whether it's a hook or something like this. And as that's going into the scabbard, this is not the right sock or the scabbard, but it will illustrate it that hook rides along the inside of the scabbard and prevents it from doubling or cutting up at the inside of the scabbard.

Some of the scabbards are aluminum, these new tsurugi ones have a metallic ring to them and are an aluminum extrusion of some sort. A lot of the other ones are plastic. Without having rollers on the inside here like you see on these what will happen with this is, as this goes down here the hook is preventing it from cutting this part of the scabbard, but the blade flexes a little bit, you'll actually end up getting holes in your scabbard, like right here where the blade just wears away. That's pretty normal. You won't see that on the aluminum scabbard stuff. There's also a whole line of saws by fanno. These feature definitely a more original look or vintage look with the wooden handles pony style saws like this. One thing this blade stands out as being enormous. This is a Mondo blade. It's the double thick. These don't come with with the, you know, high tech, New Age kind of scabbards or anything like that, but they are certainly more affordable.

We also have the notch legacy. This is a plastic scabbard. It has your built in straps if you want to use conventional leg straps on the Sugoi actually comes with conventional like straps. Just simple Velcro straps, you can see that there. So that's a nice kind of value add for those. But you will see the light drops on this scabbard as well on almost all of the silkies. There's a button lock here, this was improved from a previous version. So that's going to keep it in there. And you use this to push it. It's a very positive lock, and that's a great feature. You also see the the hook nose here or the protrusion, that's gonna prevent it from tearing up the scabbard as much. And you're gonna just see just the one roller here on the inside to protect the main contact zone, so certainly not as many rollers as you see on some of the fancier on some of the fancier silky saws.

Every saw that I've shown you today, so far with the exception of this one is a full tang. What that means is that the the handle of the saw blade actually connects all the way through into the handle the Sugoi, you see or sorry, the tsurugi has this nice skeleton where these just fit on. The rest of these don't work like that. All the other saws that you see from silky are like a two piece compression. So this handle actually splits down the center line here. And this piece comes off when you remove these bolts. So the three of us have that tooless feature that you see here, which is kind of neat. If you do need to get at it or replace it, you don't have to find any tools.

There's also a whole line of folding saws I keep one of these in my car under the seat of my car actually. I use it for all sorts of stuff camping. I've cleared brush on the side of the road in a storm with it. These come in all sizes from even smaller than this to very, very large and they all feature some sort of locks so you won't fold it on your hands. They come in straight blades, they come in curved blades, big teeth, small t. These are really nice. If you're just doing some pruning, you know, you can slip it in your back pocket. For ornamental stuff. They're also great to have around the house, or just for camping. Like I use it. They all come with some type of nice case like this, in this one even has like a form of belt loop. So that's a Gameboy, which is similar to these convoys, except it's a folder if you're looking to put a handsaw on your legs.

I love the talon. I was one of the guys that worked on developing this so I'm kind of partial, but the notch talon fits on any one of these soft scabbards or any scabbard. It has these hard plastic shells here with a very nice heat formed padding underneath there. And what it does is it offsets from your leg of the saw a little bit by pushing the scabbard out, that'll prevent you from getting a ton of heat build up their hot spots, as well as prevent friction on your leg. And it also stops, especially like, you know, so I like I told you guys I like this Sugoi. When I bend my leg, I have a very tall leg right? for shorter leg people, if the saws up here, when they bend their leg, it catches them in the in the thigh like that, right. So by pushing it out with the talent, that extra quarter inch, even if their leg is short, when they go to bend their leg, it's going to bring it up outside and not catch on their thigh. notch sounds really nice. It's pretty cheap compared to some of the other things out there. So I definitely recommend that.

Getting to be kind of a long video here. I did want to close by showing you what is actually the second biggest now they are third biggest they just came out with two even bigger versions in this. There's more Where the blade is actually as long as this hole saw with the handle which is kind of crazy, but this is the katana boy 650 look at that tooth profile compared to some of these other tea. It's just enormous. Very cool stuff from silky. Definitely love the whole silky line. But if you're looking for something more affordable I would definitely also check out this notch legacy 13 inch all these saws are available every day on tree stuff.com.

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