How to Clean Pruning Shears

My pruning shears have been in need of a good clean for a while. Although I preach cleaning and sterilizing your hand pruners all over my blog, I'm not so great at following my own advice. If you're like me then you probably have a pair of pruning shears that may have hard sticky sap built up, maybe some rust, and who knows what kind of germs. In this post, I'll show you how to clean pruning shears with household items in under five minutes. As a bonus, I'll give you some tips on touching up the sharpness of your blade as well.

Why do You Need to Clean Pruning Shears

As you can see above I have some old pruning shears that have been well used. The exhibit some rusting and dirt/sap buildup on the blade. The dirt and sap can harbor bacteria and fungus which may be harmful to the future plants that you prune. As you know, when you prune you're introducing a new wound to your plant. In doing so with dirty pruning shears, you just scraped a bunch of bacteria or fungus across an open wound. Yuck, and it may lead to serious problems for your plant.

How to Clean Pruning Shears With Household Items

As I promised earlier, this is how you will clean your pruning shears in five minutes or less. What you need are a couple of household items: Bar Keeper's Friend and isopropyl alcohol. If you don't already have Bar Keeper's Friend you should make it a new household item. It's top-notch at removing small rust stains on your silverware, pots and pans, stainless steel appliances, and many other things although I primarily use it on metal.

Remove Rust and Dirt

If you have the powder Bar Keeper's Friend then you'll need to mix it with water to make a paste/slurry. You kind of want a gravy texture if you can get it. Then you just use a cloth or paper towel to start rubbing it across your pruning blades. Focus on the areas with dirt and rust buildup, the Bar Keeper's Friend is a mild abrasive that will work through that stuff in no time. A small bristled brush can help speed up the process. You can completely take your pruning shears apart to do the cleaning and it may help you handle each side of the shears easier, but it adds to the time. I find that step unnecessary. I just make sure to be careful.

Sanitize Your Pruning Shears

After the dirt and rust have been removed with a little bit of scrubbing, you need to sanitize your pruning shears. For this I use, 70% isopropyl alcohol. You can use high percentages if that's what you already have. I have just read that the lower percent version is more effective at penetrating the cells of the bacteria. I'm not an expert, but it made sense to me. To sanitize your pruning shears just wipe them down with your alcohol and let them air dry. Below you can see the newly cleaned and sanitized pruning shears.

How to Sharpen Pruning Shears

This is more of a guide to doing some small touch-ups to your pruning shear blade. If you want a serious sharpening, you're going to want to take your pruning shears apart and maybe use some sharpening stones. My pro-tip is to just get yourself a nice little multipack of wet/dry sandpaper. You'll want grits in the 200- 600 range. Start with the lower numbered grit, which is the most abrasive, and then work your way up. Personally, I just used a 200 to even up the uneven parts of the blade and then put an edge back on. Then a little once over with a 600 grit to smooth it out.

Pruning shear blades typically are flat on one edge and then beveled on the other. The flat side is pretty easy to sand, you can even wrap your sandpaper around a small block if that helps. You want to make sure the flat side is flat again with no nicks or bends in the metal. The beveled side can be harder to sand. You want to do your best to maintain the same angle as the already established bevel. I just wrap a small piece of sandpaper around my finger for this and I'm able to work around the curved blade. Is well cared for kitchen knife sharp in the end? No. Is it good enough for my $15 pruning shears? Yes.

I hope this tutorial helped you learn how to clean pruning shears. Share your process in the comments.