Sunday, March 23, 2014

New Old Shovels

I rebuilt a couple of shovel handles this weekend. I really like how they turned out.

The top shovel was cut down from a regular, $10 variety, garden shovel. The shovel blade is now about ⅓ smaller than a "normal" shovel, and it's Milady's favorite gardening shovel. 

Unfortunately, she used it for prying last fall, and broke the shovel handle, right at the base of the blade.

The second blade came without a handle from a relative's estate. I had another busted shovel handle. 

So I put a new belt on my 6" belt sander, and took up the foreshortened shovel handles. I tapered them down to fit the blades, riveted them on with framing nails, and then sharpened them on the grinder. Not quite sharp enough to shave with. Then I sanded the handles down (they were old and splintery).

Both shovels are about 4' long now. That is actually a pretty good length for our raised beds and our modest size flower beds. And both shovels are not not-quite-razor-sharp, though that won't last real long.

Milady loves her smaller bladed shovel in the flower beds, and I like the long blade of the square one for turning the soil in the raised beds. It digs deeper and brings up more from the depths, and I think I end up with a better garden bed; certainly it's tilled deeper than with a regular, full-size shovel.
 

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