Pruners are used for cutting small stems, like flowers and grapes. Bypass pruners make a precise and clean cut, preventing damage to living wood. Anvil pruners are great for cutting old, tough, or brittle deadwood, but not so ideal for live wood because their anvil blade design may bruise or crush stems and damage your perennials. Pruners are ideal to cut smaller branches measuring less than 18mm in diameter.
Loppers are a larger, long-handled version for branches thicker than pruning shears can cut. The long handles offer good leverage and allow you to reach higher branches. They are used primarily for removing woody stems measuring 35mm or less in diameter. Use bypass loppers to cut green wood, and anvil loppers to cut hard, dead wood as they tend to crush stems as they cut. Loppers with telescoping handles allow you to cut down hard-to-reach branches.
Hedge shears are used to cut through the soft, non-woody stems of plants. There are just three situations in which you need to use them: Maintaining a formal hedge, Cutting back perennials, Yearly taming, or deadheading. Hedge shears absolutely cannot cleanly or efficiently cut through wood, even thin wood. Using shears to do this not only causes unhealthy cuts to the plant but damage to the blades of the shears.
Before start, make sure your pruners are clean, sharp and in good working order;
Holding the handles comfortably, completely open your pruners, placing the branches to the deepest part of the blade;
With the wood all the way in the blade, squeeze the handles to close the blades and cut through the branch in one swift motion.
Select the right cutting angle, a slanting cut keeps water from gathering and the cut part from rotting.
Be sure to clean pruners before putting them away to prevent rust.
Bypass loppers feature a sharp blade and a counter blade to make a clean and precise healthy cut in a scissor action. They can cut close to existing branches without leaving a nub, and are good for live vegetation, allowing the plant to heal more quickly.
Anvil pruners feature a sharp blade and a metal surface, or pocket, this creates more of a crushing cut. An anvil cut is more powerful than a bypass cut with minimal effort required. It can handle larger diameter cuts to quickly slice through tough materials, including dead wood.
It's important to clean your tools after each use. If it is particularly dirty or subject to rusting after exposure to moisture condition, clean it right away.
After each cleaning, oil the pivot joints and blades, and wipe off the excess with a towel.
It is advisable to sharpen your tool after each use, but if you feel that your tool is not cutting as well as it should be, sharpen it right away!
Store your tools in a dry and protected area, preferably hanging on a wall.