Grafting Tools
Recently I was walking for the first time through the backyard orchard of peach and apricot trees of a person that I had been I have been exchanging scion wood with. It was evident that he had made numerous successful grafts, creating some very nice multi variety trees. Peach usually accepts both apricot and plum scions and this person had had amazing success. As I admired the nice growth made on one graft I asked if he had used a whip and tongue or a cleft graft for that particular union. He said he didn't know how to graft and that he had used a grafting tool. At first that didn't sink in - that he didn't know how to graft? This was obviously impressive grafting. Just a couple of minutes later I inquired about another nice union with a similar question, adding side graft to the other two grafting techniques usually employed with small branches. When he gave the same answer and saw my quizzical facial expression he could see that I hadn't yet made sense out of his answer and and offered that he would show me the grafting tool after we finished the little tour. When we went in the garage to look at his grafting gear he showed me a device like the brown colored tool above. We looked on it for a name. No name. Anywhere. He googled "grafting tool" on his phone and showed me a picture of ones you could buy on Amazon for under $50. I had to learn more.
It turned out that the brown colored tool in the picture is the Fieldcraft Topgrafter designed by Raggett Industries in Gisborne, New Zealand. It is available in the US through several distributors. A. M. Leonard has it for $422.49. Several copies of it can be found on Amazon for prices starting at around $30. I bought two from different sources on Amazon for comparison. One was about $30 and the other about $40 and included two rolls of parafilm and a set of replacement blades. Both units are identical down to the packaging, even though they were from two different venders. Check out the picture below on the left. You can also google "top grafter" and find the tool from other sources outside of the Amazon supply chain.
It turned out that the brown colored tool in the picture is the Fieldcraft Topgrafter designed by Raggett Industries in Gisborne, New Zealand. It is available in the US through several distributors. A. M. Leonard has it for $422.49. Several copies of it can be found on Amazon for prices starting at around $30. I bought two from different sources on Amazon for comparison. One was about $30 and the other about $40 and included two rolls of parafilm and a set of replacement blades. Both units are identical down to the packaging, even though they were from two different venders. Check out the picture below on the left. You can also google "top grafter" and find the tool from other sources outside of the Amazon supply chain.
Update: Since I had two of them I took one to Kansas during grafting season and gave it to a cousin. We did about two dozen grafts on Antanovka rootstock with it and had a 100% take rate. The one limitation is that you need equal sized rootstock and scions. But that really isn't much of a limitation since you usually try to have equal sized rootstock and scions for whip and tongue too (although you can perform the union with cambium matching on only one side).
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Learning to use the tool:Here is a link to a You Tube demonstrating the bench version of this tool (operates the same as this field version of the Raggett top grafter tool): www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFBmmNDaVag
Here is another demonstration: www.houzz.com/discussions/2884160/first-bench-grafts-using-a-fieldcraft-topgrafter Links to other grafting tools: Here is a link to a quick list of 10 grafting tools that enable a person to make fairly precise grafting cuts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lN-4bhxeJM To decide if you would like to add one of these grafting tools to your grafting gear you can spend some time looking at the various You Tube demonstrations utilizing the various tools available. |