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The shovel is the most frequently used tool and they come in a bewildering array of sizes and quality types. I you go to a typical large hardware outlet, you may see 20 different shovels. Most of them will be about this size. This is a number two shovel. That means the head is about 9x11 inches but there may be shovels of other sizes and quality differences. Now, this shovel right here is the number two, this is a number one. It is a bit smaller. A bit smaller is a number zero, there is double all the way down to a little floral shovel that is not numbered, the smallest of all. If you are six foot and 200 pounds, you might very easily wheel the shovel like this with a very large blade that is going to take very large bites that weight a lot. On the other hand, if you are 80 years old, in frail health and small, you may need the smaller shovel and maybe an appropriate size for you. Also, you should pick your shovel according to thee task. That is if you are working in very tight areas, you may want a smaller shovel. If you are working out in the open then a big shovel is fine. If you are working in very dense soils, you may want a smaller shovel so that you don’t have to work this hard to take each bite. So you pick the shovel according to your personal size, the task and the area that you are working in. the next thing to look for is the quality of the head. Now, both of these are number two shovels. This one right here is a hallow-back shovel. What makes it a hallow-back shovel is this area, the frog area right in here. Why do they call it this, because this looks a little bit like a frog, or it is frog shaped. And this is a hallow. This tool has been made out of sheet metal that has been stamped into a particular shape and rolled it formed, sometimes cold, sometimes hot but the steel has a grain that runs in this direction when it is rolled out in a mill. So when it is stamped out, the shape is stamp is stamped across the grain and that creates these weak spots where the shovel can be broken. This tool right here is a ford shovel. Now a ford shovel is make by taking the barb steel just about the thickness of this handle. It is heated to 1600-2000 degrees, depending on the alloy, put in a great forge hammer that comes down and beats it into shape. Right in here, this tool is solid steel, where the other tool is a hallow tube, that solid in there. There is no place for water to work up in and weaken the handle and head connection and this is where the most of the force is applied. So this is an extremely strong shovel. In addition, this is heavier and denser. It will hold an edge better because the material is denser and tougher. These two tools, while their different sizes have significantly different connections. This one right here is a rather common connection and if this is what is called a straight shoulder and there is a single rivet right through here. This one would normally end here if it was a straight shoulder but instead it has this tab that comes up here and a second rivet, here is the first rivet. The second rivet is driven through in the opposite direction. Extending the head up the handle bar, you have a much stronger connection and this tool will take a lot more at work than this tool. The next tool to look for is a good clean straight grained handle. Generally American ash and you want the grain to be fairly tight. And you don’t want changes in color that may indicate a weakness in the wood. You also want to make sure that the grain is properly aligned. You can see the whiter part of the grain is here on the side of the shovel and the tighter part of the grain is here in the same direction as aligned along with the shovel blade because if you bring this around and the grain is running in the wrong direction, the shovel is much easier to break. The last thing you might want to look at is the difference in handling. We have two shovels here. Both having heads similar in size but they are significantly different in length depending on how tall you are. Make sure that when you are going to the store and you look closely at a shovel, rather than just picking one off the shelf at random.
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