Disinfecting Saws...

Gautama

Gautama

What have you all been using to disinfect your saws, ie. after working on a crabapple with fire blight...etc I have been using Lysol, but was seeing if there is something better.
 
The only thing with wipes I can see being a problem is that it can be hard to get in all the nooks and crannies of the teeth. Better a spray or complete submersion.
 
One thing I like about the little spray bottles most is how easy it is to carry around. Fits in my pocket and if I were doing multiple trees I can disinfect after every tree if I had to with just a few spritzes.
 
This topic has come up many times before.

To get the best understanding of how disinfecting might work for arborists find out how disinfecting works in medicine, health care and food processing and serving.

It takes MUCH more than just contact with some sort of disinfectant to be effective. Soaking or scrubbing needs to accompany the disinfecting to really work.

Spraying with your choice of solutions sure isn't going to hurt but it's likely not going to be really effective either.

If you used a high concentration of something like bleach to clean your tools you'd probably find that any leftover bleach would kill tissues...plant and arborist too. Be careful!
 
We start EVERY job by sterilizing all pruning tools. Pole saws, pole pruners, hand pruners, hand saws, any loppers or whatever that may get used...etc.

We use razors and stiff wire brushes to scrape sap and stuck sawdust, then do a final wipe down with 91% rubbing alcohol. There are a lot of diseases that we know are passed via cutting tools. The ones I fear are the ones we don't even know about yet.

If I ran the numbers on how much $ I spent each year paying our crew to sterilize pruning tools...I won't like the number- but I feel it's a responsibility.

love
nick
 
A dip or a wipe alone ain't gonna do much. If we're thinking there's bacteria jammed in the gunk between the Silky teeth, are we soaking long enough to ensure the alcohol is penetrating deep enough to kill the bacteria? Just get rid of the evidence :)
 
NickfromWI said:
A dip or a wipe alone ain't gonna do much. If we're thinking there's bacteria jammed in the gunk between the Silky teeth, are we soaking long enough to ensure the alcohol is penetrating deep enough to kill the bacteria? Just get rid of the evidence :)
Click to expand...

Nick & Tom are exactly correct.

It seems there are at least 3 major concerns.

1. Mass Transfer (noted above).
The disinfectant needs to penetrate into all of the infected material.
Experiment: Spread a very thin layer of sawdust on a flat surface; wet the top thoroughly with alcohol; wait & then check bottom side !

2. Reaction Time (Chemical / Biological)
These are NOT instantaneous.
Even autoclaves with very high temperatures & pressures, require extensive time at those extreme conditions.

3. Disinfection Material Efficacy
Isopropyl alcohol, bleach, pesticides, etc are not all equally effective.

I think these are some reasons that the disinfectant / preventative material is applied to the tree's cut.

If you just disinfect between trees, or jobs, are we just propagating the disease within the tree, or job ?

I certainly understand this is extremely time consuming.

P.S. I think I killed a lot of apple, peach, plum, pear & apricot trees 30 years ago !
(They were all mine !)
 
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Greg that is another good point about propagating the disease within the tree. Are tree with certain diseases best left treated and not pruned? Out of the three you listed alcohol, bleach, and pesticides which is most effective if you know?
Thanks
 
Most effective ........... ?
I certainly don't know the answer.
It gets back to Disinfection Material Efficacy.
A generic pesticide probably would not work well on a fungus problem e.g. Use fungicide, .......
Good Luck
 
D.C.C. is less caustic , irritable to skin
We use this in tissue culture lab in spray bottles also used in hot tubs
You can bulk and mix your own fairly cheap
I try and spray scrub wipe off spray again let sit for ten min done before moving into the next tree
With felcos handsaws loppers
Works well on trees and grapevines with issues



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Ideally it would be great to have a compressor on the truck to remove material from tools with a focused, low volume, high pressure water stream. Cold water would work, hot water better especially for breaking down sap and pitch. Then dry with compressed air. I think that would be a fairly quick operation per tool cleaned. Don't know if there are existing accessories that would work for the task.
-AJ
 
Yes it could Guy. As long as you used a flame that kept a low heat though it would be fine. Without knowing the steel used it would be hard to just throw a number out there for temp, sorry. As far as temp to kill infections...not a clue.
 
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