Help! My secateurs keep biting my hand!

Twice in two days I have pinched the base of my forefinger and drawn blood. Ouch!
Do you do that to yourself? Do I need to wear gloves? Won't happen. I hate them and I'll forget (again).
Is there a brand you use that is less likely to do that? I have small hands. I like small tools. I have a lot of small wood to snip. I got a Japanese pair and thought they'd be ideal, but no.
I use loppers for the bigger stuff.
Thanks
Ellen

my main ones are #8 felco’s. i think it would be really difficult to pinch yourself with them.

I need pictures:
1. the secateurs in your hand in the open position
2. the secateurs in your hand in the pinch position

Without pictures, I'm wondering if the secateurs are closing too far and causing the pinch, which could be helped by wrapping tape around a part of the handle to act as a stop to prevent them from closing that far. Secateurs usually have a "lock and store" position, that is likely tighter than it needs to actually do its job.

I used to have a favorite style of secateurs, but the place I got them stopped carrying them. They worked really well in my small hands. If we can't modify your current pair, you may have to try a bunch to find ones that fit and work better for you. Lots of people work without gloves, however, possibly instead of a whole glove, you could salvage a bit of leather and make a guard that slides down your forefinger, and wraps around your palm with velcro or similar on the back of your hand. This way the leather would get pinched instead of your hand. I hear you about gloves. I do wear them a lot myself, but finding ones that fit and are comfortable on small hands is a major issue.

After Hubby abused his hand, he bought some of the battery powered clippers, but on "a lot of small wood" they would be more time-consuming than using secateurs. For harder, thumb width or larger pruning, they are awesome for my small, wimpy hands.

As Jay said, photos would help greatly, or a link to where you purchased? maybe the brand/model? There are so many out there, we can only speculate...

You say that you prefer small tools, likely because you have small hands, but too often that also means the tools are suited for smaller work than their "normal-sized" counterparts for average size hands. Twigs not branches, stems not stalks. And if you do try, it's a battle of biting deep to get leverage, which opens the handles wide, resulting in choking up on them to get a full grip, at the same time losing leverage and necessitating a crushing grip to make the cut. There's no finesse as the cut suddenly yields, and your flesh is pinched where it is too close to the pivot, latch, or a spring.

I have done the same thing myself, both with the tiny tools (borrowed) that I can't help but choke up on (it's more of a smothering, really) AND ALSO with my Felco pruners, when I force them to do a lopper's work. I know this, yet I still won't get the loppers beforehand. So, a bit of the tool, and a bit of the technique... When I use the Felcos properly, they are great.

A friend of mine has the Milwaukee M12 battery powered shears, and they are amazing. They have two settings, a full stroke, and a half-stroke which is faster for not making the full swing. It is about the size and weight of a metal 'D' cell flashlight. The nice thing is you hold it and activate a button, not grasp and release, so there's no RMI or fatigue as with secateurs.

Felco roll grips- in my case left handed. I ran a vineyard for eleven years and spent entire winters pruning in the cold. Felcos are strong, comfortable and the shape doesn't do bad things to your hands with extended use. My wife also uses Felcos and I swear this is true- last year she dropped her Felcos on a path in the vegetable garden. The chromed spring between the handles shot out and disappeared somewhere thataway, never to be seen again. Later the same week we took a load of rubbish to the tip. I got out of the truck and saw something shiny sticking up out of the mud- the spring out of a pair of secatuers!

And a tip when using secateurs to cut tough stuff- or anything for that matter- gently bend the branch you are cutting away from the blade as you cut and the effort required to make the cut is halved. The more you bend the branch the less effort required but the more liklihood that you'll cause a split as it goes. You'll soon learn to judge it.

All right! You've convinced me. Felcos it is. I'll get the 14's for myself for an early christmas present.
I'm unclear what you mean by "roll grips". Is that the ones they say have a rotating handle? That would be the 15's. Maybe I should consider those. Though I don't have a whole vineyard to cut back, just a small (but dense) yard.
And in the meanwhile you've given me some really good ideas for retrofitting my current shears so I stop injuring myself.

I think what I have are these:

Ellen Lewis wrote:All right! You've convinced me. Felcos it is. I'll get the 14's for myself for an early christmas present.
I'm unclear what you mean by "roll grips". Is that the ones they say have a rotating handle? That would be the 15's. Maybe I should consider those. Though I don't have a whole vineyard to cut back, just a small (but dense) yard.
And in the meanwhile you've given me some really good ideas for retrofitting my current shears so I stop injuring myself.

I think what I have are these:

G'day Ellen. With the roll grips- I think mine are number 10's (left handed) -  the handle your fingers curl around can move back and forth about a quarter turn or more, so your grip is always good and there's nothing rubbing your fingers to cause blisters. I used to get the occasional blister near the webbing at the base of my thumb, but I was cutting stuff more than an inch thick sometimes, and pruning six or seven days a week until it got too dark to continue. The area under vines grew in size every year- I used to take five thousand cuttings per year to keep it growing.  I was mighty relieved when it got to be more than I could do on my own and we began hiring a team of Romanians  :)  

Just thought I'd add- another good thing about Felco is that you can buy new blades and all the parts, although in a normal sized garden you're unlikely to break anything or wear it out.

I used to sentimentally treasure my dad's old Coronas. They must have been made in the 1950's.
But when I tried to replace a part the design had changed so I couldn't get the part I needed.

Have a look on ebay Ellen- might find an old pair you can vandalize. What part do you need? Might be possible to make it or get one made- plenty of old farts with workshops and needing a challenge  

Good idea, but they're long gone. Probably was the blade but I don't recall.

Thank you everyone. I went to the garden store and tried the Felcos, both the roll grips and the standard.
I think I'm not coordinated enough to use the roll grips, nor do I have that kind of full-time pruning to keep up with.

this happened to me yesterday and you know that the first thing I thought of was this thread!!!
I noticed I was holding the clippers in a sort of non-natural way (my hand was twisted around trying to get a branch around the back of a tree) and I realized I would naturally hold clippers "sideways", let's say up and down parallel with my bent elbow, perpendicular to my chest. If I start twisting around then bad things happen, lol.
I also recall this used to happen to me a lot, but it's been a few years-- meshing nicely with when I started doing physical therapy on my hand (to build strength to address the arthritis in my thumb). I suspect the lack of strength/pain, combined with my gunky, aged clippers had me twisting and contorting to actually make the cut, and that's why I was getting pinched. I've also bought some nice new clippers since.

Do you have a set of new clippers?

They haven't arrived yet. I've been pruning with gloves on.