My boss in Portland bet me a chainsaw bar the hand pruners would beat the pole saw on a 12 foot Japanese maple, he lost
We had a sad little Japanese maple out front of a condo complex on NE Fremont and he swore the pole saw would be faster for the thin stuff up top. Took me 25 minutes with the Felco pruners and a step ladder while he fought that vibrating saw for 40 and chewed up two limbs he had to clean up after. Clean cuts with the hand tools meant almost no follow up work, and his saw left torn bark all over the place. Anybody else's crew still reaching for power tools when the job is really a hand tool job?