A first bonsai tool set: what you actually need

Bonsai tool sets are sold from four pieces up to twenty-two, and the piece count is a poor guide to usefulness. Here is what a first year actually uses.

The four tools you will genuinely use

1. Twig or bud scissors. Long narrow blades that reach inside a canopy without damaging what surrounds the cut. The tool you pick up most often, by a wide margin.
2. Concave cutter. For removing branches so the wound heals flat. The tool that makes bonsai pruning different from ordinary pruning.
3. Wire cutter. A blunt-nosed cutter for taking wire off without gouging bark. Ordinary side cutters do not have the right head and will damage the tree.
4. Root rake. For repotting, which you will do within the first year or two.

A set with those four and nothing else covers a first year completely.

The tools that come next

Knob cutter — once you have a stub to clean up, which is usually after the first serious pruning.

Jin pliers — for stripping bark on deadwood features and for gripping and twisting wire.

Long tweezers with a spatula end — weeding, placing moss, working soil into gaps.

Root scissors — heavier than twig scissors, for roots that have grit in them. Using good twig scissors on roots is how good twig scissors get ruined.

What tends to sit in the roll

In a twenty-two piece kit, a fair number of items are there to make the number. Folding saws, small brushes, spare wire, a grafting knife, several similar sizes of scissors.

None of it is useless, and most of it is used rarely. Which is fine, as long as you are not choosing a set on the count alone.

How to compare two sets

Four questions:

1. Does it contain a concave cutter, or only scissors? Many cheap sets are scissors and pliers with no concave cutter, and that is the tool worth having.
2. What is the steel? Where a maker states carbon or stainless — or names Yasugi steel — that is real information. Where they say only “stainless steel construction”, expect basic.
3. Does it come with a roll or a case? Loose tools in a drawer chip each other’s edges. A roll bag or a wooden box is a genuine part of the value.
4. Is wire included, and in how many gauges? Several sets bundle four or five rolls, which is a real saving if you are starting from nothing.

Carbon or stainless in Miami

Worth deciding deliberately here rather than by price.

Carbon steel takes a finer edge and holds it longer. It also rusts in this climate faster than most people expect — a tool left out overnight in summer can have surface rust by morning.

Stainless is more forgiving of an occasional user in a humid place, and the edge is perfectly adequate for everything except the finest work.

If you will oil your tools after every session, buy carbon. If you know you will not, buy stainless. That is the honest test.

Sizes

Tools come in sizes matched to tree size. Full-size tools on a shohin tree are clumsy; small tools on a large trunk will be damaged.

Most sets are sized for medium trees, which is the right default. If you work exclusively on very small material, look for a set described as shohin or small.

Buying separately instead

A perfectly reasonable route: buy one excellent pair of twig scissors and one good concave cutter, and add tools as jobs demand them.

It costs more per tool and less in total, and everything you own gets used. The argument for a set is that it is cheaper up front and it comes with the roll.

Looking after them here

Sap off after every session — it is acidic and etches steel. Wipe dry. A light film of camellia or machine oil on blades and joints.

Never store damp, never store outside, and never store loose in a drawer. The roll bag the set came in is the storage, not the packaging.

Sharpen with a fine stone, following the existing bevel. Bonsai tools are ground on one side of the blade; grinding both destroys the geometry.

Where to look

The sets, from four-piece cutter sets to full twenty-two piece kits, are on the bonsai tool sets page, with the contents itemised as the maker states them. Individual cutters and shears are at cutters and shears, wire at training wire, and repotting tools at tweezers, rakes and repotting.