How’s this for a manly looking beast of a tool?

Had the Black & Decker Alligator Loppers been a chunky pair of bladed loppers – that would have been badass enough. But who needs sharp blades when you have a mini chainsaw between the jaws instead!

Operating the Alligator (and the toothed jaws do resemble some kind of prehistoric carnivore) is very simple, open the handles and clamp the jaws around any branch up to 100mm in circumference. Squeeze the two triggers situated on each handle and the chainsaw kicks into action making short work of the branches.

The unit weighs 3.5kg, which helps to offset any kick-back you might encounter. The 500g fast-charge, interchangeable battery pack gives the Alligator good balance. There is a corded version, which it lighter at just 3kg but if you ask me, operating a chainsaw powered by an electrical cord is a Darwin Award waiting to happen.
Cordless is definitely the way to go and it eliminates the need for an isolating transformer or residual current device.

While the Alligator isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a traditional chainsaw, I found that it could cut branches slightly larger if I cut from the top and then the bottom, rotating around the branch a little as it cut. As 100mm branches can weigh a fair bit, it helps to trim off chunks further down the branch to lighten the load and prevent the chainsaw blade from getting pinched at the thick end of the branch. The Alligator made short work of thinning out the unruly branches of the giant Silver Birch on our property – and chopping the fallen branches into manageable pieces for the fire this winter was a breeze.

Smaller (up to 20mm) branches should probably be cut with secateurs or traditional loppers as they wave around a bit and the chainsaw sends to rip them apart rather than give them a nice, clean, healthy biased cut.

It is recommended that after each 10 minutes of cutting (and you can do a lot of cutting in 10 minutes) you should oil the chain and check it’s tension, but this is quite simple to do.

If you’ve got several of established trees on your property (or the neighbours have and they’re over-hanging yours) then the Cordless Alligator Loppers are a Godsend for keeping them in check, but for $229 (the corded version is slightly cheaper) you’d want to make sure you have enough work around the garden to warrant the initial outlay.