Gentle Giant Garden Tool’s Titanium-coated Bypass Pruner

I do plenty of gardening, and an absolutely essential tool is a good bypass pruner. A bad one will make the job take forever and give you horrible results. A good set will make whatever task you have fly by. The last one’s I covered here were the former. These Gentle Giant Garden Tool’s pruners are most certainly the latter.

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With a soft and ergonomic grip, these Gentle Giant pruners rocketed to the top of my garden tool list, and are right up there with my Fiskars pruners. They have an adjustable grip that will accommodate small hands like mine or giant man mitts like Hubby’s. The aluminum alloy handle is lighter weight that steel while not sacrificing strength to power through tough, dried rose wood. The steel blade has a coating of titanium to help maintain a sharp cutting edge and resist corrosion. What they market as a selling point, but one that I’m not 100% sold on is the “auto rotating handle”. Supposedly, the idea is that the handle rotates so as to not cause friction on the hands that leads to calluses and blisters. Maybe I just need to get used to it but I found that the rotating handle cause me to not maintain a sure grip on the pruners while cutting larger branches. Plus, I’m always of the opinion that the less “moving parts” on a thing, the less likely something in it will fail.

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Lastly, I must touch on the price. These are fantastic pruners, and I like them a great deal, and they have a “lifetime guarantee” (full disclosure, their website says it’s a 45 day warranty, and you must mail the product with receipt back to them. Compare that to Fiskars who just wants a picture of the damaged item and they ship you a replacement…for the lifetime you own the product. FOr a third of the cost.), but $35 is absolutely bonkers. You can get really good pruners for half that price on Amazon, big box stores, and home and garden centers. For a third of that price you can get some really decent ones with a lifetime, n0-hassle replacement warranty. I don’t see any good reason to charge that much for simple, non-anvil, no ratcheting bypass pruners. The rotating handle might be neat, but I think they have a product that will give the bigger companies a real run for their money if the just knock $15-$20 off the price. And clarify their warranty coverage. At $34.95, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They’re great pruners, just not $35 great.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from Till Harvest.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

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LifeWell Technologies Aluminum Garden Trowel

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Going back to the garden, I like hand tools best. Not only are they easier for me to use and control but they are a little more intimate than Hubby’s larger, more rugged tools. And when LifeWell Technologies offered me their aluminum Garden Trowel, I was thrilled. I’ve had a few different garden trowels, of various materials and build qualities, and almost all were found to be lacking. They’d bend, break, rust, or just plain fall apart and fail me. Usually mid-job, and nothing will frustrate a gal more. LifeWell Technologies claims this is “The Best Trowel You’ll Ever Buy”. Bold words. Let’s see if they live up to them.

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LifeWell Technologies Garden trowel looks to solve all of those previously mentioned issues. Rust? Pffft. It’s made of aircraft grade aluminum, polished to a flawless chrome-like finish. The edge is sharp enough to dig clean through rocky, uneven ground with no issue. Bending? A thing of the past, what with the thick, robust neck and full tang handle. Break? Did I mention that it’s made of aircraft-grade aluminum? This LifeWell Technologies trowel shouldn’t break even under heavy loads and stresses. So now that we’ve established that this trowel is better than all my past trowels, lets get into how it’s been so overbuilt that it became my favorite.

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A lot of trowels I’ve owned have been just a straight wooden handle, with little thought given to ergonomics or comfort. This LifeWell Technologies Garden Trowel has a handle clearly made by someone who has used the before and knows exactly when one puts their fingers and thumb. It has a rubberized non-slip coating too, that not only reduces hand strain my being slightly padded, but means your damp or wet hand won’t go sliding down the handle and crash painfully into the spade. It even has a slightly elongated tip if you need to pound the trowel past a tough root or two. It’s even a bright and attractive neon green that means your not going to lose it in the grass or tall shrubs. It’s not so heavy that you get hand fatigue but not so light that you think it’ll break on the first rock it hit. “Built like a brick ‘out’house” Hubby would say, although not so politely. I think I’ve found the garden tool I won’t be sharing with Hubby. This green beauty is all mine. As for LifeWell Technologies boast of this being the best trowel I’ll ever buy, it might well be, as well as the last  trowel I’ll ever need to buy. Well done, LifeWell Technologies.

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I received the above product(s) free of charge from LifeWell Technologies.  I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion.  My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.

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