Anvil Ratchet Telescoping Lopper

Comments about Anvil Ratchet Telescoping Lopper:

I picked this over the bypass version because it claims to cut 2.5 instead of 2 inches. I have too many branches to tackle with a saw but was really getting stuck with my standard 30" corona loppers. I thought that a ratchet would apply incremental pressure with each squeeze, and that's exactly how it works, leveraging my effort into the blade over 4 strokes. I pruned two trees with this and found that, with the ratchet and 4 squeezes of the handles, you can easily and without effort cut thru 2 inch branches (this tree just didn't have any 2.5 inch ones, but it seems quite capable of 2.5 inches). The jaws open to 3 inches at the very tip, but gempler's has it right by calling it a 2.5 inch capacity as the jaw will not really fit around a 3 inch branch.

Build quality is good, solid, no flexing. The handles can be quickly adjusted for length, the adjustment mechanism on mine (mar 2012) looks like a minor improvement over the picture. With smaller branches, you have to push on the blade part of the head so that the ratchet will start the closure process, a minor quirk, and you still have to pump the handles the same 4 times to go from fully open to cut off. You will also have to deal with the wide opening handles, which might be a problem in tight quarters but I was able to adjust.

But don't let these concerns put you off, it works and works well. If you have bigger branches to cut, and regular loppers with their single action won't get thru the branch without arms of steel and multiple tries, this is a winner and you won't regret the purchase. But it doesn't replace single action loppers for the smaller (under 1 inch) branches as it would just take a while finish the tree if you had to pump the handles 4x for each branch.