This tool looks pretty interesting. Chip budding and two types of top grafting.

http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog/productdetails.cfm?ProductID=T245


Joencolo has one of these tools & says it works great. Have a look at a Citron he grafted using the Omega. A side note: I have seen these on Ebay with a buy it now price of $49.

I see this is an old post, but just had to comment.

I paid about $80 for my omega grafter with shipping back in 2000. It was from A. M. Leonard. I was heavy into roses at the time. It was a complete failure as far as grafting roses. With roses being sort of pithy in the center, it just couldn't take the crushing effect of the cutters.

I have learned since that it is the 'cat's meow' for fruiting trees and vines. So glad I have it now...

I have discussed that tool to death in other forums. It is good as a beginner tool but to make it really work, it has plenty of caveats.

One major major drawback is that the surface are of contact is not that good, so it doesn't really form a nice strong union when your grafted scionwood is exposed to windy areas. Compare this to a simple cleft graft where the union is more than 8 linear inches in total contact length. The omega grafting union is only a couple of linear inches. So the omega graft is easily blown off by the wind after it took and grew. Although perfectly matching graft, it is a very weak graft. You need to support it with a splice. So you have to reinforce about three pieces of bamboo bbq sticks, and wrap it as additional support for the union for at least one whole season. Unless you live in a windless area, then you don't need to do this extra support. But if you count the extra steps for support, you are way better off with a simple cleft graft than using the omega grafting tool.

Real life problems will present you with imperfectly matched diameters between scionwood and rootstock, most of the time. The omega grafting tool needed a crispy wood that doesn't get crushed and works best when diameters are perfectly matched.

The best thing that the tool does is to placate the novice grafter. But really, simple practice with a box cutter can bring wonders. Later on, you would find that the omega grafting tool has very limited success rates on other things that you can do, compared that with a simple $7 cutter from Home Depot. I am bad with any knife or box cutters, too lousy, lacked refined motor skills, but I am able to overcome those limitations with practice and proper aligning of cambiums.

Other simple techniques like bark grafting, T-budding, Chip-budding, cleft grafting, whip and tongue, don't require perfectly matching diameters. And all can be done using a box cutter knife. And they produce very strong graft unions if you make long tapered cuts.

One very picky cultivar to best illustrate the failure of omega grafting tool is to graft persimmons. I only get less than 10% success rate with omega grafting tool when grafting persimmons. Whereas, bark grafting persimmons, using ordinary kitchen knife are about 100% success rate. And when the birds roost on the 10% successful omega grafts, it quickly became 0% success rate.

I have long ago given away my omega grafting tool to another novice.

As far as citrus goes we've had better success with a simply T-Bud. On top working trees a few years ago I bought a "Top Grafter" and have worked over 40,000 trees with it and have had better success with it that anything else, better cambium matches without crushing the material.
http://www.raggettindustries.com/

On our top worked trees I use Buddytape and havent had any problems with winds.. (High winds in this area at times)

Its pricey, but if your doing large numbers of trees its worth the investment. Twenty years ago I use to do them all with a cleft knife and blades.. I'm glade those days are over!

Turtleman, thanks for the link. that is a decent tool that I am dying to try out.

I have no question that you can do 3,000 grafts with it in a normal day, if the plants are arranged, factory style. Currently in the same factory style arrangements where the rootstock plants have been prepared on assembly line, the best workers that I know can do 3,000 T-buds in a day, but requires two of them. One to prepare the rootstock, the other to do the T-bud insertion.

With the topgrafter, I don't think you will be able to top-graft existing citrus trees in the field at the rate of 3,000 buds a day with one operator. Preparing a huge tree for topworking requires 30 minutes to an hour using a chainsaw, before you can do your graft. Moving from limb to limb requires time also. You would only be able to top-graft at most 20 trees in a day, simply because you have to prepare a huge tree.

In my case, the time required for grafting is not the major problem. Where to graft on the tree, especially if you have more than 80 kinds of cultivars on it, would now require me to think hard where to place the additional cultivars that would allow them to take, grow and fruit. Thinking where to place them would sometimes require from an hour to one month of planning, although the actual grafting operation could just be about a minute.

But the topgrafter from raggettindustries would be excellent if you are a plant propagator, doing your operations in a well prepared assembly line. For one, it cuts labor time in half, you would use only one operator instead of two, and that alone saves a lot of money. Topworking on existing big trees, however, would still require chainsaw, pruning shears, and lots of time preparing the tree, and lots of time cleaning up the debris, and the amount of time you would save using the grafting tool would be insignificant.

Okay, for what it's worth....the truth is........I never got one graft to take (on roses) using the Omega Grafter. My successes were always with budding. I became disgusted with it and put it on the shelf. Just this past week, I clicked on one of the links on this forum, and I saw a company's employees bench grafting grapes using an omega-type grafter. That is where I 'assumed' I had found the real use of said grafter.

I can see where there is a definite problem with wind, animals, and whatever else plagues the grafter when using this tool. I would think that if I had any successful takes, I would always be thinking about the possibilities of high winds/storm damage, or failure on the grafts in the future. I distinctly remember the problem of getting a good wrap on the grafting attempts. I never knew if everything was lined up or if there was contact after finishing the wrap.

If anyone has an idea that they can 'make it work' and would like to have mine, it's theirs for $35 and shipping. That is less than half price of what I paid for it.

I'm going to stick with what had always worked for me the good old fashioned way, tried and true!

I don't use the Top-Grafter on our citrus here in the nursery, we never had good success rates with cutting larger material, so we still default to the T-Bud. On a average day the best budder I have can completes 1100 in the field bud in a full day, I on the other hand can never seem to get over that 600 mark!. Everything in the nursery is container grown and root stock material is in 4"X14" pots so its real easy to deal with. It's just a matter of setting up the organization table and getting to it.
Deciduous Fruits on the other hand do much better with the Top-Grafter and we have no problem with grafting 1800 trees per day, and I think we could do more if we didn't always run out of root stock or scion. Very seldom or never will I grow more than 2000 in any one variety.
Remember.. that tool only cuts up to a 5/8th inch stock
So "Top Working" in the traditional method it wouldn't apply, you'd have to default to the Ol' Cleft graft
BUT! it's a super fast way of adding a pollinator branch to every 20 trees or so in a orchard. Simply walk down a row in the orchard and select some young wood that's under 5/8th inch, give it a wack! and tie up the new wood... Poof!, the new pollinating limb. LOL
The most recent cross pollinators I did here were LI and Sherwood Jujube's. Works real well.

Opps. the way it works its real easy to match stock size, no mis-matches!

dang, maybe I should be selling these things the way I sound

Next time I get back up to Placerville where my orchards were I'll have to bring it by so you can try it out