Idiots guide to fuchsia cuttings: please.

I use a craft kit knives ?, bought it in Tesco it was in 1 of those dumpers where everything is £1, got 2 actually 1 for the garden and 1 for kitchen use, brilliant for scoring fat on pork.

 

Both nice and sharp

Never seen a TV gardener using anything remotely like them ... always a "pen knife" type thing, and I always wonder "When they say SHARP how do they keep that thing sharp"

I have a box of Swann-Morton No. 22 scalpel blades which I use when I want sterile cutting - e.g. cutting up Snowdrop bulbs for twin scaling (they gum up with the sap from the bulbs in no time!). Nice large blade, 10p each, I dispose of the blade after each bulb to avoid transmitting virus.


for routine cuttings I have been using a #10 disposable with handle

but now that I compare the two they are surprisingly expensive! between 50p and £1 each, whereas a box of 100 [non-sterile] blades would be £10 / 10p each and a reusable handle is £1 - clearly I need to consider that in future! I've snapped a few plastic handle ones in my time too, on more woody things. Swann-Morton make a nice scalpel handle with ruler:

but looking at their website
http://www.swann-morton.com/
caused me to spend some time checking out the Craft knives too
http://www.craftknives.co.uk/
I've always thought of craft knives being like this:

my daughter had a craft set like that when she was into card-making. Terrified me having an exposed blade (at that age). Turns out (well, it was news to me!) that there are a range of handles, taking different sets of blade fittings, which are probably better suited to taking cuttings - stronger ones, for example.

The Supa range includes the retractable Supa-R

for which a range of blades are available. They have a different fitting to the basic craft knife (and not the same as medical scalpel blades), and are for more heavy duty applications

probably better suited to cutting anything "woody". The blades are about 50p each (if you buy 50-off), although quite a bit more than medical scalpel blades I only use 4 or 5 a year, so I don't think its a consideration.

Swann-Morton also do a "profession craft" range, which fit regular scalpel blades, with a handle that is probably nicer to hold than the regular scalpel one:

and, perhaps more usefully, that includes a retractable handle module - the "Retractaway":

wish I'd known about that when my daughter was card-making!

 

So: my regular butter knife won't do then, Kristen

 

Shock, horror for all that use proper tools! I use a pair of kitchen scissors for mine and no problems.

 

Actually, I think scissors would make a very clean cut. that's all that is needed.

I can't comment on how sharp M's butter knife is though

 

To be honest , I usually just poke them down into the pot as they are probably bits that broke off by accident.

 

I've never done that. Oh No!

 

Here`s 10 I took today while cutting the lawn.. Shrimp Cocktail if I remember right.