Fiskars Telescoping Pruning Stik #9240

The Fiskars telescoping tree trimmer is fabulous! This is the second one that I purchased from Amazon. It is so easy to use and so incredibly sharp that it makes tree pruning and sawing high branches a breeze. Fiskars makes great equipment and is a great company to deal with they give a lifetime guarantee on their trimmers.

Things to like:

Not much.
It does not have the dangling rope and handle my old unit had.
The rotating head is useful sometimes.

Things to dislike:

It does not have the power nor the longevity and strength of my old unit. (The old unit was purchased from Builder's Square many years ago. It was stolen, and I don't remember the brand name.)

Advertised - cuts up to 1-1/4 inch diameter. Well, yes if it is something very soft such as a vine stem. For oak, maple, hickory, 3/4 inch is about all it will manage.

Use: Both the head locking mechanism and the extension locking mechanism loosen up continuously. The saw attachment nut and bolt fell out and got lost almost immediately. They could have included a five-cent lock washer for that.

Longevity, strength: I used it for a couple of hours. The movable blade bent and the spring that retracts that blade snapped.

[...]

I will try Lowe's or Home Depot for some other brand next time.

THIS IS THE TOOL THAT SAVED MY ARMS AND BACK. IT'S SO EASY TO USE WITHOUT GOING UP A LADDER. HAVE PRUNED 1/3 MY PROPERTY ALREADY.

This pole pruner performs very well, the ability to rotate the head (easily cutting branches at different angles) was one of the main reasons for the purchase. The second reason was the simple/clever design on the cutting and handling (no additional rope to pull/to mess with) I wouldn't like to push it's cutting ability more than 1 1/4" inches, so I would definitely recommend people not to push it above/or at 1 1/4" inches. I haven't had the chance to use the saw head/blade setup. I was pleasantly surprised how light it is; this will reduce the hand/neck ache that can go along with trimming trees

I noticed that some reviewers mentioned that the packaging was poor (it still is - as of August 2008), this is an understatement; I was lucky that the pruner wasn't damaged during shipment. It was `packed' if that is was they call it; wrapped would be a better description, wrapped in a single sheet of thin cardboard. This type of item needs to be shipped in a cylinder/tube box or at least a box that will support/cover the whole item. The packaging that was used wouldn't protect the pruner from anything other that dust! It is amazing that the item wasn't bend/twisted/dented etc. Now saying all of that, if it gets to you without being damaged you will enjoy using this pruner, hence the 5 stars

excellent product, already done with winterizing trimming around the house, when I first pulled the cutting bowel and branch fell down, my wife instantly said " magic", that's how I felt, too. But then moving on to larger branch and switching to cutting saw and that's when problems occured, first the wing nut which were used to tighten and positioned the saw were being knocked off by the tree because of the push and pull motion; which un-screw the wing nut, went down and look for it, after finding it and tightening it up super tight, back to work and the extension poll fell out also caused by the push and pull motion, pick it up, slided it back in, tightening it up and figured out how the rope and jaw reacts to each other and did some adjustments, and it works fine ever since, I'd give it a 5 star if not because it took me 30 minutes to find things and fixed and adjusted it the first time I've used it, other than that, it's a great helper to make things possible.