How To Repair A Shovel Handle

I know. Yous have superhuman forcefulness and y'all broke your shovel handle.  Way to go Wonder Adult female.  Hither's how to replace that shovel handle.

I dug a hole and bankrupt my shovel.  I'm a gardening beast with the strength of 12 oxen who just watched the motion-picture show Rocky. There'south no other caption for it.

Either that or I didn't have care of my shovel handle and left it out in the sun and pelting every garden season since its nascence. Regardless of how information technology happened (pretty sure it was the oxen force) my shovel handle broke a couple of weeks ago when I was moving my asparagus patch in the garden.

Instead of buying a new shovel, I cleaned my onetime shovel upward and so replaced the handle.

If you also are super human and bankrupt a shovel handle, here's how you can supervene upon it.

---

How to Replace a Broken Shovel Handle

Materials

new shovel handle
rivets (often come with shovel)
chisel (an old ane that's by its prime)
hacksaw
hammer
drill & bits

Steps

1. Clamp your shovel tightly into a vice.
2. Using a chisel, bending grinder or hacksaw remove the rivet property your broken handle on to the shovel head shaft. If the rivet is very tight use a chisel to pry it up just plenty to maneuver a hacksaw blade into the infinite.

for everyone in the annotate section having a heart assail over using a chisel, please note you lot should employ an quondam chisel.

2. One time you take enough room for your hacksaw blade, use it to cut the head of the rivet off.

3. Using a punch or a narrow screwdriver, pop out the rivet.

4. Once the rivet is out you have the mess of a handle left inside the shaft to deal with. All the wood needs to come out.

Removing the woods is the biggest pain in this whole process.  You have to chisel and hammer and drill until all the wood comes out.

TIP

If you know your shovel handle is on its last legs, replace information technology BEFORE it breaks.  That way when you remove the rivet holding the handle to the shaft, you can just pull the shovel handle out with a couple of whacks to the shovel head.  This is a lot easier than chiseling out the broken wood.

v. Grab yourself a new shovel handle.

TIPS

• Shovel handles are dissimilar than brook handles. They're thicker and longer.
• When you lot're picking a shovel handle, choice one that has obvious straight lines and obvious grain.  This is important when you lot're positioning your new handle into the shovel head.
• Some shovels come with rivets.  Others don't. If yours doesn't, brand sure you buy a couple of rivets.

This is a adept instance of seeing the face grain of the forest. It'southward the stuff that looks wiggly.

This is a expert instance of the border grain of the woods. It looks similar straight lines.

Your handle should have visible straight lines and visible wiggly lines.  Pay attention to these.

6. Seat your new handle into the shovel head by holding it like y'all meet in the picture below and giving information technology a few whacks against a cement floor or sidewalk.

**  MAKE SURE THE STRAIGHT GRAIN IS AT THE FRONT AND Back OF THE SHOVEL Caput. The curvy grain should be at the sides.**

If you gear up the shovel handle this manner it will be much stronger and harder to break.

7. One time the handle is seated you can drill a hole through the handle where the new rivet(s) will go.

My handle came with a plug in the end. Inside were two rivets.  Shovel rivets have a head merely on one cease.  They agree in place when you hammer the other end which flattens it out.

8. When the hole is drilled into your handle, knock a rivet through it. It should slide in fairly easily.

9. Flip the shovel over and so the stop of the rivet without a head is facing up.  Identify your handle on a strong solid surface and whack the end of the rivet several times with a hammer to flatten it out.

Flattened out, at present the rivet has two heads and tin can't fall out.

10. Add a glaze of beeswax and mineral oil (like my Beeswax Board Butter) to your shovel handle to protect it from the elements.  You tin as well utilise something like Thompson'south Water Seal.

Y'all're done!  Unless of class you want to add your maker's mark.

Why practice all this? Why not but get a new shovel? Reduce, reuse, recycle, revamp.  Also, at that place'due south that feeling of accomplishment you go when you achieve something that would brand Charles Ingalls proud.

You can practise it.  You're Wonder Woman.

→Follow me on Instagram where I oftentimes make a fool of myself←

Source: https://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/replacing-your-shovel-handle/

Share this post