Dump The Bench Grinder: Sharpen Hedge Shears With An Easy To Use Lowe's Tool

Sometimes it's obvious when garden tools are getting dull. Whether it's the sound of your chainsaw working too hard or the way your lawn looks when you mow with worn blades, the symptoms are hard to miss. With hand tools like hedge shears, the signs that it's time to sharpen can be just as obvious, but they may not always get the attention they deserve. You don't have to stand over a noisy bench grinder and a shower of sparks to sharpen your hedge shears, though. Sharp Pebble's Orange Ninja Multi Tool Garden and Knife Sharpener is a pocket-sized sharpening tool from Lowe's that's easy to use on a variety of garden tools.

Priced at about $45 at the time of writing, the Orange Ninja tool is seven tools in one. But even though it has a carbide tail slot labeled for sharpening pruners and shears, that doesn't mean hedge shears. The tail slot's preset angle doesn't work for hedge shears because you actually want to sharpen them with the factory bevel. It's better to use the single-bevel tool on the Orange Ninja, which is the same one that's used on hoes and shovels. It doesn't heat the metal and cause it to become soft like a grinder does, so your tools stay sharp longer. The Orange Ninja can go right in your garden apron and it takes only a couple of minutes to sharpen your hedge shears.

The Orange Ninja is a handy little tool, and makes quick work of sharpening all kinds of things, including lawn mower blades, axes, shovels, hoes, knives, scissors, pruners, and hedge shears. When you're sharpening your garden shears, it's best to start with a clean tool. Use soapy water for built up grime, turpentine for sap, and steel wool for rust. If you're working in the field and want to give your tool a quick edge, just wipe it off with a cloth. Hold the shears open and stroke the sharpener along the bevel edge at its factory angle, then give it a light pass on the back to knock off the burrs.

Another reason the Orange Ninja is a good fit for hedge shears is that you only want to give it a few light passes to refresh the edge and avoid reshaping it. Do the second blade the same way, since hedge shears only cut well when the edges of both blades meet evenly. While the Orange Ninja can work for a lot of tools, it isn't the best for sharpening your hedge trimmers or chainsaws. That's because a file isn't one of the seven tools on the Orange Ninja. It has a rotating disc on the front with four different slots, a tail notch, and two diamond sharpening stones on the handle. With these, you can sharpen a lot of different tools, and axes have their own tungsten carbide slot that makes them simple to sharpen.