[TheForge] Shovels and the History Channel

[dann at wctatel.net]

About 1982,  I bought a $37 spade.  The price is easy to remember,
because, I about choked at the "sticker shock": I had figured on buying
one costing about $10.  The owner of the Mom & Pop hardware store selling
it, just grinned at me, and said, "If you can break it, I'll replace it
with a new one, no questions asked".   He went on to say he had simply
given up on selling the cheap ones that his customers broke and tried to
return.

The point is 25 years later, my $37 spade is still an undamaged worker,
and I have spaded a lot of ground, and used it to start digging a lot of
wooden post holes.  Quality was worth the price.

Also, because of the price, it was easy to get my dander up if some one
used my good spade, and didn't put it right back in the shed <grins>.
I'd guess  that also added to its longevity.

Dann

> Folks,
>
> Last season I spade up my garden in a field that had
> not been tilled for 20 years or more. Lots of back
> breaking work and a spade blade that cracked.
>
> On the History Channel they had a show about shovels,
> they showed the most aggressive garden shovel ever
> produced in a factory. The spade is spring steel, it
> has saw teeth and a reinforced fiberglass handle. I
> couldn't find it at my local stores, so I checked on
> line for it.
>
> Ace Hardware on line had it, $45.90, with free
> shipping, if you used google to order it, your first
> order gets a $10.00 discount, so it was $35.90. I
> ordered it Tuesday and it came today.
>
> BTW it's a Seymour S710 shovel or spade.
>
> It works really well, cuts roots easily. I could not
> make something like this for that price.
>
> Jerry
>
>
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