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Pruning Saws and Folding Saws: A Buyer's Guide (Plus Bow Saws for Big Cuts)

Michael Kahn, Sacramento homeowner and lifelong gardener
Michael Kahn
12 min read
Gloved hand cutting a tree branch with a folding pruning saw

A dull pruning saw is one of those tools you don’t think about until you’re 20 minutes into a cut that should have taken 20 seconds, sweating, with your bad shoulder starting to complain. I’ve owned the cheap ones and I’ve owned the good ones, and the difference is not subtle. The right saw slides through a three-inch limb like it isn’t there. So this is the guide I wish someone had handed me before I wasted money on a hardware-store saw that cut like a butter knife.

This is one spoke in our larger tree care tools guide, and it lives next to the guides on hand pruners and loppers. The short version of how these three fit together: pruners handle anything up to about half an inch, loppers take you to an inch and a half, and a saw takes over from there. If you’re not sure which tool a given branch calls for, our which pruning tool breakdown sorts it out by diameter. This page is about the saw.

What a pruning saw actually does

A pruning saw and pole tool used for tree branch work

A pruning saw is built for one thing: cutting live and dead wood on a standing tree, cleanly, without mangling the branch or tearing the bark. That’s a different job than a carpenter’s saw. Clemson’s Extension puts the dividing line at about an inch and a half of branch diameter, which is where loppers give up and a saw takes over. Their fact sheet describes a pruning saw as having a narrow blade for maneuvering into tight crotches and coarser teeth than a carpentry saw, with most blades cutting on the draw stroke.

That coarse-tooth, pull-cut design is the whole point. Green wood is wet and springy. It grabs a fine blade and packs the gullets with wet sawdust until the saw stops cutting and starts burning. Coarse teeth clear that debris and keep moving. Pull-stroke cutting lets the blade stay thin, so you spend your energy cutting instead of shoving a wide blade through wood.

Buyer’s guide: the three types worth owning

There are three saw shapes worth a homeowner’s attention, and they don’t compete so much as cover different ground.

Folding saws

A folding saw is the one I reach for most, and it’s where you should start. The blade folds into the handle like a big pocket knife, so it’s safe to toss in a bucket, clip to a belt, or carry up a ladder without a sheath. Blade lengths run from about 6.5 inches on a pocket model up to 10 inches on the bigger folders. That covers cuts from a pencil-thick sucker up to a limb around four inches thick.

The Japanese-style folding saws changed the game here. The teeth are impulse-hardened, triple-ground, and set to cut on the pull stroke, and they slice green wood fast enough that you’ll double-check whether you actually finished the cut. A 240mm (9.45-inch) folder is the sweet spot for most yards: long enough to power through a real limb, short enough to fold away and forget.

Fixed-blade saws

A fixed-blade saw is a folding saw’s bigger sibling. No hinge, so the blade is stiffer and usually longer, in the 13-to-15-inch range, which lets it eat through limbs in the four-to-eight-inch class faster than a folder can. It rides in a sheath or scabbard on your belt. If you’ve got a lot of trees, or you’re taking down real wood on a pruning day, the fixed blade saves your arm.

The tradeoff is that an exposed blade is less friendly to carry and store. For occasional cuts, the folder is safer and easier. For volume, the fixed blade earns its keep. I own both and grab the folder nine times out of ten, but that tenth time I’m glad the big saw is on the wall.

Bow saws

A bow saw is a different animal. It’s a tubular metal frame holding a long, thin blade under tension, usually 21 to 30 inches, with coarse peg-tooth or raker teeth around 4 to 6 TPI. It cuts on both strokes and it clears sawdust like nothing else. Where it shines is big, dead, dry wood in the open: bucking up a fallen limb, cutting a downed trunk into firewood rounds, slicing anything past about six inches thick where a pruning saw would take all afternoon.

Where a bow saw fails is inside a living canopy. That deep frame bangs into every branch around the one you’re trying to cut, so you can’t get the blade where it needs to go. Don’t buy a bow saw for pruning. Buy it for the woodpile and storm cleanup, and keep a curved pruning saw for the tree itself.

Blade length, tooth count, and matching the saw to the branch

Three numbers matter when you’re standing in the aisle.

Blade length should be roughly twice the diameter of the wood you cut most. A short blade is more controllable in tight spots; a long blade cuts big limbs in fewer strokes. For general yard work, a 240mm folder or a 13-inch fixed blade handles the widest range.

Tooth count is measured in teeth per inch (TPI), or on Japanese blades, teeth per 30mm. Coarser is better for green wood. Aim for 6 to 8 TPI (about 7 to 10 teeth per 30mm) for live branches, because coarse teeth clear wet chips and cut faster. Fine blades around 9 to 11 TPI leave a smoother surface on small finish cuts and dry wood, but they bog down in sappy green limbs. If you only buy one saw, get the coarser one.

Pull-stroke geometry is standard on Japanese-style saws and most quality pruning saws for a reason: a thin blade in tension cuts with less effort and binds less. Set the teeth into the wood, then draw the saw toward you with a long, smooth stroke. Let the weight of the blade do the work and ease off on the return. You are not muscling this; you are letting the teeth eat.

Match all of that to the branch:

  • Up to 1.5 inches: hand pruners or loppers, no saw needed
  • 1.5 to 4 inches: a folding saw, and this is the tool most homeowners use most
  • 4 to 8 inches: a fixed-blade saw, or a folder if you’re patient
  • Over 8 inches, dead and on the ground: a bow saw or, honestly, a chainsaw

How to use a pruning saw: the 3-cut method

Clean saw cuts on pruned tree branches

Here’s the mistake that ruins trees and terrifies new homeowners: you start sawing a heavy limb from the top, you get halfway through, and the branch snaps under its own weight and peels a two-foot strip of bark straight down the trunk. Now you’ve got a wound the tree may never seal. The fix is the three-cut method, and both the University of Minnesota Extension and Clemson teach the same sequence.

The University of Minnesota’s guide lays it out cleanly: undercut first, then top-cut, then make the final cut at the collar.

Cut one, the undercut. About 12 to 18 inches out from the trunk, saw up into the underside of the branch, one-third to one-half of the way through. Then stop. This little notch is your insurance. When the limb falls, the bark tears only as far as this cut and no farther.

Cut two, the top cut. Move an inch or two farther out and saw down from the top until the branch breaks free. It’ll snap off cleanly between your two cuts, and the bark stops at the undercut instead of running down the trunk. Now you’ve got a manageable stub instead of a heavy, dangerous limb.

Cut three, the final cut. This is the one that matters for the tree’s health. Find the branch collar, that slightly swollen ring of bark where the branch meets the trunk, and the branch bark ridge on top. Trees Are Good, the International Society of Arboriculture’s homeowner site, explains that this collar is the tissue the tree uses to seal the wound and wall off decay. Cut just outside the collar, at the angle the collar sits. Do not cut flush with the trunk, because a flush cut slices off the collar and leaves a wound the tree can’t close. Do not leave a long stub either, because a stub dies back and rots. The University of Minnesota is blunt about it: prune just beyond the branch collar, but don’t leave a stub.

Get that final cut right and you don’t need to paint the wound with anything. Skip the wound sealer. The tree seals itself faster when you leave the collar intact and let the wood breathe.

For the bigger picture of when and how much to cut, our tree trimming tips guide covers the whole job, and timing matters as much as technique. Most shade trees want their cuts in the dormant season, so check when to trim your tree before you start. Fruit trees follow their own calendar, which we cover in the guide to pruning fruit trees.

Maintenance: keep the blade cutting

A pruning saw is low-maintenance, but two habits keep it cutting for years.

Clean the pitch off. Sap and pitch dry on the blade and drag on every stroke, and pine and fruitwood are the worst offenders. Wipe the blade down with a rag soaked in mineral spirits, a citrus cleaner, or plain WD-40, then dry it. For baked-on buildup, a bronze brush or a little oven cleaner cuts through it, just don’t scrub so hard you round over the tooth tips. Finish with a thin film of oil so the blade doesn’t rust between jobs. I clean mine whenever it starts feeling sticky and always before it goes on the wall for winter. Sanitizing the blade with a wipe of isopropyl alcohol between trees is also smart if you’re cutting anything diseased, so you don’t carry fungus from one tree to the next.

Know when to replace the blade instead of sharpening it. Most modern pruning saws use impulse-hardened teeth, the ones tipped in dark blue-black. Those teeth hold an edge far longer than plain steel, but the hardening makes them too hard to file at home. When they finally dull or you chip a tooth, you swap in a new blade rather than sharpening. That’s why Silky and the other good brands sell replacement blades for every saw. Older saws with plain, unhardened teeth can be touched up with a feather-edge file. The tell that a blade is done: it wanders off line, it grabs and jerks, or you’re leaning your weight into wood the saw used to slice through on its own.

Safety

A pruning saw doesn’t have a motor, but it’ll still put you in urgent care if you’re careless. A few rules I don’t break.

Keep your free hand and your legs out of the blade’s path. A saw that skips out of the cut goes exactly where your other hand is resting. Cut with a stance where a slip sends the blade into open air, not into your thigh.

Fold or sheath the saw the moment you’re done with a cut. An open blade left on a ladder step or in the grass is how people get hurt walking past their own tools.

Stay off the ladder for anything overhead. This is the big one. Reaching up with a saw while balancing on a ladder is how homeowners end up in the ER, and our write-up on a real tree trimmer accident is a sobering read. If the branch is over your head, use a pole saw from the ground or hire it out. Anything near a power line is never a DIY job.

Wear gloves and eye protection. Sawdust in the eye and a slipped blade across the knuckles are the two most common minor injuries, and both are avoidable.

If you buy one saw, buy a quality Japanese-style folder. The Silky GomBoy Curve 240mm is the one I hand people who ask. The 240mm blade folds safely into the handle, the large teeth chew through green limbs up to about four inches faster than saws twice the price, and when the blade eventually wears out you drop in a replacement instead of buying a new saw. It runs around 40 to 55 dollars depending on where you buy, and it’ll outlast a decade of hardware-store throwaways.

If you’re cutting a lot of bigger wood on pruning days, add a fixed-blade saw in the 330mm (13-inch) class for the four-to-eight-inch limbs. And if your real problem is a woodpile or storm cleanup rather than pruning, buy a 21-to-24-inch bow saw and keep it out of the canopy. For a homeowner starting from zero, though, the Silky GomBoy folding saw plus a decent pair of bypass pruners covers the vast majority of what a normal yard throws at you.

One more thing worth doing before you spend money on any of this: think about which trees on your lot are actually worth the ongoing pruning, and which ones are fighting you every year. A weak-wooded, fast-dropping species is a lifetime of saw work. Our friends at MK Library have a good rundown of trees to plant near sidewalks that pairs well with picking species you won’t spend every weekend cutting.

Frequently asked questions

Folding saw vs fixed-blade saw vs pole saw: which do I need? A folding saw is the everyday grab-and-go tool for cuts up to about four inches, and it folds away safe in a pocket. A fixed-blade saw has a longer, stiffer blade that cuts bigger limbs faster on a full pruning day. A pole saw puts a saw head on a pole for branches you can’t reach from the ground. Start with the folder and add the others as your trees grow.

Do pruning saws cut on the pull stroke or the push stroke? The pull stroke. The blade is thin, so pushing would buckle it. Pulling keeps the blade in tension and cuts with less effort. Draw the saw toward you with a long, smooth stroke and ease off on the return.

What TPI should I look for on green wood? Coarser teeth, in the 6 to 8 TPI range, or about 7 to 10 teeth per 30mm on Japanese blades. Coarse teeth clear wet sawdust and cut green wood faster. Fine blades around 9 to 11 TPI are for finish cuts and dry wood, and they clog in sappy live limbs.

Bow saw vs pruning saw: when does the bow saw win? On big, dead, dry wood in the open, like bucking a fallen limb or cutting firewood past six inches thick. The deep frame clears sawdust fast on straight cuts. Inside a living canopy the frame gets in the way, so a curved pruning saw wins there.

How do I clean pitch and sap off a saw blade? Wipe it down with mineral spirits, a citrus cleaner, or WD-40, then dry it and add a thin film of oil to stop rust. A bronze brush handles stubborn buildup. Do it whenever the blade feels sticky and before you store it for the season.

When should I replace the blade instead of sharpening it? Impulse-hardened teeth, the dark-tipped kind, can’t be filed at home, so you buy a replacement blade when they dull. Older plain-steel teeth can be touched up with a feather-edge file. If the saw wanders, grabs, or you’re forcing it through wood it used to slice, the blade is done.

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