Budding and Grafting Knives As with all tools, try to buy the best you can afford: you get what you pay for and a quality grafting knife should last a lifetime. Although there are cheaper brands on the market, the best by far are made by Tina. Alternative knives will often have a stainless steel blade; fine if you are in the habit of leaving your knife in water but they will not hold a razor-sharp edge. The 605 model, although primarily a grafting knife, is suitable for both budding and grafting. Dedicated budding knives have either an extended bulge on the top of the blade for lifting bark or a bark lifter at the back of the handle. The operation can be achieved easily enough by using the back of the blade tip. The blade of the 605 is bevelled on one side only and can be obtained for left- or right-hand operation. The advantage of using a one-sided blade is the ability to make straight cuts whereas a two sided blade requires more control to stop the cut wandering. My own knife, with diamond and traditional whetstones and illustrated in the sharpening section, is a CK model bought about fifteen years ago after I dropped my previous knife, made by Sayner and in the opinion of many professionals superior even to Tina, onto a concrete floor and broke the tip. The only criticism of my current knife is the slightly blunt end which is not ideal for the summer grafting method I have described in the Propagation section. By contrast, the Tina knife has a much slimmer tip making it ideal for more precise work. On the subject of Sayner, if any reader has information regarding this company it would be much appreciated if they could get in touch as the last mention I have of them is over ten years ago. Mention should also be made here of one other type of knife that is sometimes used, predominantly by Japanese nurserymen. The laminated knife is produced by sandwiching a strip of high carbon steel between two layers of soft iron to produce a knife of superb sharpness but unconventional design. The core metal is of extreme hardness, considerably more so than the traditional knife, but because of this it is also extremely brittle with little or no flexibility. The soft iron that it is layered with gives protection and provides robustness without which it would be unusable as a working knife. Because of the method of construction the knives are made as strips about six or seven inches long, an inch or so wide and about an eighth of an inch thick. The size is not fixed and as they are made by hand any size or specification can be accommodated according to the buyers wishes The handle is the strip itself and the cutting edge is one end cut at an angle and finished with a bevel. In use, the knife behaves as any other single sided grafting knife except that the whole knife is moved at an angle so that one side of the bevel then becomes the flat side of a conventional knife. It takes a bit of practice getting used to the difference and for that reason is probably best suited to those propagators who already have some experience. However, if this is the only type of knife you've ever known then it is ideal for beginners! I will put a photograph up shortly to better illustate it. Co-incidentally, this method of construction, when applied to conventional knives such as those for the kitchen, produces a tool of outstanding quality; the ability to hold an edge almost indefinately and able to turn the toughest cut into something more akin to butter! The cost, when obtained directly from the master craftsmen in Japan who produce them, compares very favourably with expensive and fashionable French and German knives.
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