Do you know what a good pair of fabric shears costs? It surprised the heck out of me the first time I borrowed my wife’s pair. I might have to pick up a pair of Fiskar’s titanium nitride Shop Shears for my shop so I won’t have to listen to that tirade again.

When you think Fiskars you don’t immediately think shop tool, but they’ve actually sold their Shop Shear for a few years now. They match ergonomic handles to TiN coated stainless steel blades which resist wear, scratches, and chemicals. The resulting shears will cut through fabric, cardboard, rope, wire, plastic strapping, Kevlar, and thin sheet metal, to name a few.

You can pick up the 8″ in pair starting at $11 and the 9-1/2″ pair starting at $16.

Fiskars [Corporate Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

This was going to be a simple post comparing the Gerber Artifact with the Mini SuperKnife as a keychain knife/tool. As I started gathering details, it was turning into a Gerber vs. Gerber post: Gerber was acquired by Fiskars in 1986, and in 2005 Fiskars Brands acquired Superknife and integrated it into their Outdoor Recreation division, Gerber Legendary Blades. One big happy conglomerate…

Anyway, I decided to add a couple more similar-sized tools alleged to fit on a keychain, and solicit your opinions. From right to left in the picture (not to scale): the folding blade SOG Micron, 1.5″ blade length and 3.44″ overall length when opened, costs around $10. The Mini SuperKnife, 1.77″ long closed and 2.95″ long opened, is a small folding utility knife that costs about $5. The Utili-Key, 2.75″ long, goes for approximately $7 (TM mentioned this device 7/24/08, 5/1/09, and 8/20/09). The Gerber Artifact, 3.5″ long closed and 4.8″ long opened, is available for $6-7 (TM had a 9/15/08 post on the Artifact).

What’s your choice for a small keychain knife/tool: A knife-only option, or a pseudo multi-tool?

SOG Micron Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Mini SuperKnife Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Utili-Key Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Gerber Artifact Via Amazon [What’s This?]

The Fiskars Micro-Tip pruners are great for precision trimming jobs on small plants, flowers, and even vegetable gardens where a larger pruner would be unwieldy. The non-slip handles, blade cover, and blade lock also keep the sharp parts away from your soft parts. Looking at the 1-1/2″ blade, I can also imagine a host of uses in the shop where larger snips or cutters would be too big or clumsy for intricate cutting or trimming work - feel free to share your ideas in comments!

Street pricing runs about $10 from your local Home Depot.

Fiskars Micro-Tip Pruners [Home Depot]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Can anybody tell us why you’d buy an 8-inch hatchet — what good is a hatchet this short?  You’re not going to get much of a swing with it, and you’re not really gaining much portability over a 14-inch hatchet.

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When you’re pruning, you don’t want to carry around a bunch of tools, so Fiskars’ Dual-Cut lopper lets you cut both large and small branches cleanly with the same tool.

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Down here in Texas we don’t see a lot of rainfall, so something with this large of a footprint would be utterly ridiculous to maintain, but other parts of the world might be a different story. The idea is to save that rainwater and find other uses for it.

Systems like this range from the pretty simple to the absurd. Our big questions:  Does anybody do this, and how well does it work for you? Collecting rainwater from the gutter into a bucket with a spigot could be a spiffy way to get some clean water — or a fast way to gather some watered-down bird poop in a big tub. We’re not sure one way or the other.

Is this a gift from the environment or just another way to add a clunky collector to the side of the house? Let us know in comments.

Rainwater Collection [Fiskars]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

With apologies to Huey Lewis:  I want a new rake, one that won’t tear my hands apart, one that won’t break on a single use, one that makes me feel like I just bought a great new tool.  I want a great new tool, babe.

I appreciate the beauty of a simple tool:  the lever, the inclined plane, the wheel, the shovel, the rake.  When I need one, there’s often no substitute — I can’t imagine getting along without them.  But do I need a fancy, expensive one?  Is a basic one enough?

The rake above, a snazzy one from Fiskars, sports a “longer” handle and an aluminum, teardrop-shaped handle.  It also runs up into the $35 range, if you’re not careful where you buy it.

Is a fancy rake worth the price, when you can get a basic one for $12?  Let us know in comments.

Garden Rake [Fiskars]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Denny and Kathy, who seem to run an Ace Hardware dealership, are selling the Fiskars 8511 hand drill for $10.79.  The Fiskars — a basic, small, cheap, eggbeater-style hand drill — works well for small jobs where there’s no need for a cordless drill. Of course, you can often find a vintage one on Ebay for about the same price.

Fiskars 8511 Hand Drill [Denny and Kathy's]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

I remember a time before weed whackers — at least before my family had one — a time when men and women would crawl around the yard on their knees with a hand shear to trim the grass at the edge of the lawn. Whether it was a better time or just a simpler time may be up for debate, but if Fiskars’ long-handled swivel grass shears had been around, they would’ve spared us a lot of strained backs and sore knees.

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Father’s Day is coming, and if your dad already has a chipper shredder, this Fiskars tree pruner will compliment it nicely. It slices, it dices, it even juliennes… wait… The pole tree pruner will add an extra 12′ to your reach, which makes a huge difference whether you’re on the ground or swinging from limb to limb.

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Kangaroos are famous for their expandable pouches, so what else would Fiskars call a container that’s just 3″ tall but expands to hold up to 30 gallons of wet grass or leaves but the Kangaroo Barrel?  Our favorite feature: small holes in its bottom drain off excess moisture so you don’t waste effort carrying around water weight.

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If you’ve made the decision to go the hand operated route vis a vis shrubbery surgery, some heavy duty gear is in order, like Fiskars’ gear-driven lopper — the PowerGear. 

The handles on the big lopper are nylon-fiberglass composite that Fiskars calls “Nyglass,”  which they also claim is extremely difficult to break.  The blade is good ‘ole hardened steel with an innovative non-stick coating and connects to a gear mechanism that Fiskars says reduces the force required to operate the tool by half.

Oh yeah, and it looks like a medieval torture device.  I think that fits in great with trimming hedges, which I think of as torture anyway. (more…)

Fiskars  recently released the Power Gear Bypass Pruners – a set of garden shears that looks like most others, but has a few features that make us suspect that at least some of the engineers at Fiskars have gardened enough to end up with blisters.  We sure have.  

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Mom always said gardening was “nature’s reward.”  We always wondered why “nature’s reward” involved so much dirt and sweating.  Why not a free dinner?  Or maybe a cordless combo kit? 

Anyway, the bulb transplanter from Fiskers is aimed at removing some of the difficult and often frustrating process of digging, removing, and placing a fragile bulb or plant into its new home.  Think of it as a way to speed up the planting process and help place you back in your home faster.

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