good as new

Yesterday my Felco secateurs arrived back from servicing.  They had been getting a bit blunt and tired for a while, then when I cut through a moderate sized twig one day they fell to pieces in my hand.  Fortunately they can be refettled to be good as new (for a moderate fee).  The agents for Felco in the UK are Burton McCall, and if you send them your no-longer functioning secateurs with a cheque for (at the time of writing) £14.99 then a few days later you get them back in perfect working order.  Mine had been fitted with a new spring, new blade and new bolt to hold them together, and lavishly smeared with what looks like vaseline.  (They used to come back with a miniature carton of WD40 and strict instructions on the importance of regular lubrication, but no longer.  Maybe this has been dropped to save costs, or maybe it was a marketing initiative by WD40 that has come to an end).

It is true that for £14.99 you could buy a pair of secateurs, but the point of Felcos is that they are incomparably nicer to use than anything you will buy in that price bracket, especially if you do a lot of pruning and cutting back.  Mine are number sevens, which have a grip that swivels as you cut to reduce the strain on your hands.  They are of the bypass type, meaning that the cutting blades move across each other in a scissor action instead of pressing the material to be cut against an anvil.  They are very sharp when newly fettled, and hold their edge well.  They do not crush plant stems or leave ragged edges.  In short, they are very nice bits of kit.  I know the old saying has it that a bad workman blames his tools, but over the years I've come to believe that appropriate tools make most jobs almost infinitely easier.  Not gadgets, and not always anything very complicated.  Just the right thing for the job.

Burton McCall's website does not advertise this service prominently.  When I was hunting around it to check the current fee and address where I should send the secateurs I couldn't find details, and ended up ringing them.  The address at the time of writing is 163 Parker Drive, Leicester, LE4 0JP and the phone number is 0116 234 4646.  I posted my secateurs off on 11th February and they were back with me on February 19th.

I never know how to answer when they ask me in the Post Office whether the package is valuable.  What is the value of a pair of secateurs which are a decade old, are currently broken, will cost £14.99 plus outwards postage to repair, but will be as good as new thereafter, and the list price is £62.99?  At any rate I'd rather the PO didn't lose them.  They haven't, so far.  You don't need to pay list price for new Felcos.  Garden4less will do you a pair of number sevens for £41.99.  Other models are cheaper, if you don't want the swivelling handle, and left handed ones are available.  I bought a Felco pruning saw from Garden4less and it was excellent, very sharp, definitely the real thing and arrived very quickly.  Quality garden tools are such a small and specialist market I can't believe anyone would bother to make fakes anyway.