No.61  2026 Spring Gear Review  2026.05.21

Pfanner BT Com

It’s difficult to anticipate when communication becomes difficult. It could be due to weather, tree height, obstructions between workers, vehicle noise. Hand signals and raised voices can do a lot in tree work but having a system such as Pfanner’s BTCom, which is slick and minimal, enhances safety ten fold. Connect five together and the whole team knows what is happening and where. Spend the day speaking in a low volume to lower mental fatigue of not being understood and keep miss-communication stresses to a minimum. They can be color coordinated to your favorite Pfanner Protos and are easily recharged with a proprietary adapter. Knowing when to move and when to wait is key to eliminating the biggest cause of accidents in tree work, ‘Struck-by’s’. Make your team safer with a set of BTCom’s. 

Marugen Handsaw　https://www.nokogiri.co.jp

The window tooth design is best for rigging and a finer tooth design better for pruning. What kind of work you do dictates the choice of handsaw. Oh no, you don’t use one saw for everything do you?! I cant stand the huge tooth design of Silky. It doesn’t do anything well, why does Silky have such brand power, especially in America and UK. Don’t foreign people make handsaws. I guess I should know, but to be honest I’ve lived in Japan too long to care much about it. Japanese handsaws are the best but we have to be considerate about the differences from brand to brand. Marugen are based in Suzaka, Nagano, many of my friends use this brand and I began to explore their range a few years back. The older models at Marugen are great for pruning but not quite aggressive enough for rigging, I thought. Last year I visited to buy a cool folding saw with long wooden handle, this is such a useful tool for trees covered in vines. By chance the boss was at the shop and he told me about a new tooth designed for rigging work, he drew it on paper for me and spoke at great length about the qualities needed to cut a lot of material, low vibration. It needs to remove a lot of material while maintaining low vibration. If you imagine a bicycle riding along a gravel road, when the tire pressure is too high the bicycle moves up and down too much, it cant maintain good forward momentum. When the tire is wider and the pressure lower it can absorb the impacts and move forward efficiently. He told me that the window tooth design, while cutting a lot of material loses efficiency because of the high vibrations. Damn, I wished my Japanese was better, haha, but I felt his passion and waited eagerly for the release date. Ten months later I got a call from him, the saw was ready, a saw specifically designed for rigging work, could it be true. The length is 33cm, a little longer than I’m used to, but what I found is that the smoothness balanced with cutting efficiency needs the longer length. The length completes the cutting stroke perfectly, it matches. I felt great respect for the Marugen boss, his passion and design sense, just amazing. The model number is #103. 

Why Arborists Should Be Paying Attention to Wearable Health Data

Tree work demands a lot from the body—and the nervous system. Long days, heavy loads, awkward positions, high-risk environments, and often inconsistent sleep all add up. Most arborists track gear, knots, and cutting techniques meticulously, but very few track the one thing that underpins all of it: their own physiological state. Wearable sensors—watches, rings, chest straps—are starting to change that.

Beyond Steps: What Actually Matters

1 Sleep quality (not just duration)

2 Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

3 Resting heart rate

4 Daily strain/load

5 Recovery scores

These metrics give insight into how well your body is adapting to stress—not just enduring it. 

The Autonomic Nervous System: Your Internal Control System 

At the core of all this data is the autonomic nervous system. This regulates everything you don’t consciously control—heart rate, breathing, stress response, and recovery. It has two main branches:

1 Sympathetic (fight or flight) → action, stress, output

2 Parasympathetic (rest and recovery) → repair, recovery, regeneration

Performance—and safety—depend on your ability to shift between these states efficiently. Not just being “on,” but being able to come back down and recover. Wearables give you a window into how well that system is functioning. 

HRV: Personal, Not Universal 

HRV reflects how your autonomic nervous system is balancing stress and recovery—but it is highly individual. There is no universal “good” score. A “low” HRV for one person might be normal for another. What matters is your baseline and your trends over time.

1 Stable or rising HRV (for you) → coping well with load

2 Consistently suppressed HRV (for you) → accumulating fatigue or stress

3 Sudden drops from your norm → early warning sign

When your system is under strain, you may experience slower reactions, reduced coordination and grip reliability, and poorer decision-making at height. 

Sleep: Where the System Resets 

Sleep is when the parasympathetic system does its work. If that’s compromised, recovery is incomplete. Poor sleep impacts motor control, risk assessment, and emotional stability. Wearables help you identify patterns such as alcohol affecting deep sleep, late meals disrupting recovery, and irregular schedules keeping the body in a stressed state. 

Managing Load Like You Manage Risk 

You already assess anchor points, tree condition, and weather. Your body should be part of that assessment. Wearables allow you to adjust workload based on recovery, spot cumulative fatigue early, and avoid pushing through low-readiness days.