It is necessary to fixate a bone fracture when the 2 parts don’t align properly and when there will be excess motion. If not prolonged healing will occur along with excess bone callous between the parts in an attempt to hold the parts together and fill up the spaces between the parts that has air space between them and not bone to bone. Likewise sometimes while doing Mango grafts our cuts on each side or the curvatures of each part doesn’t allow the parts to align or lay on each other perfectly. The grafting clips in the video below can compensate for our grafting weaknesses and for scions or branches that curve up or down or side to side by holding the pieces together where it’s crucial.
I was making a list in my head while doing these of all the advantages to using clips and I’ll tell a few that I can think of.
So when you attach these 3/16-5/16” scions with budding (Buddy) tape and you are doing it on a very thin new shoot that can easily get pulled off at its base as you pull the buddy tape tight to secure the scion you don’t have to do that anymore...pull tight.
Why? Because when you apply the clip it supplies just enough pressure down on the 2 sides to bring them together but not crush them.
Also if your cuts aren’t perfect the clip makes up for that.
Since you are using very thin diameter scions being attached to very thin shoots when you make the cut into the shoot deep enough a lot of the time that shoot that has heavy leaves on top becomes structurally unstable but when you attach the scion with buddy tape it’s still is unstable but with the clips across the 2 pieces the weakened thinned out portion becomes supported by the “patch” which is the scion and the “glue” which is the clips.
Also sometimes when you make your entry with your knife into the scion the angle can be a bit too steep so when you attach it to the shoot the top part will not lie flat on the shoot. Here we try to press with our fingers the 2 parts together and twist the tape to make it stronger than tie the pieces together hoping that the pressure from the 2 parts to pop up doesn’t happen. But now we just have to put a clip there to hold the parts together. A lot of times you’ll have a scion that curves to the right or curves to the left or it’s just curves back-and-forth to forward back and even if you cut the scion as perfect as possible when you line everything up you have to like push part of it over. But with the clips you can compensate for that and straighten it out and it’ll stick in place. In the video you see 2” clothes pins. The branch of the tree curved upwards. This scion really needed to be pulled down on its top and it’s base and the center. It was so stiff it would have been worthless to tie it down because nothing could hold it down enough except a clip/clothes pin with lots of constant downward pressure keeping the parts stick together till it heals together just like a fixated bone.
https://youtu.be/CU8y1LuMpBY