Garden Spade

Spades
A spade is a tool designed primarily for the purpose of digging or removing earth. Early spades were made of riven wood. After the art of metalworking was discovered, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the advent of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth, with picks being required to break up the soil in addition to a spade for moving the dirt. With a metal tip, a spade can both break and move the earth in most situations, increasing efficiency.

The spade is the ultimate hand digging tool. Although the shovel can dig, its forte is to lift and throw. The main differences between a spade and a shovel are:

• the blade of a spade is flat rather than dished
• the shaft of a shovel tends to meet the blade at a slight angle
• the shaft of a spade meets the blade at no angle for maximum force 
•  the shaft of a spade is shorter than that of a shovel with a handle at the end
  

The best spades have a blade forged from a single piece of high carbon steel. Fiberglass and metal shafts are stronger than even a high quality ash shaft but do not absorb shock so well. Stainless steel spades are also available but tend to bend if they are not of the best quality. They are less easy to sharpen than carbon steel blades.

Spades come in two sizes:

• border spades (smaller and for use in flower borders)
• general spades (larger and designed for heavy digging)
  

Designs of spades
Spades are made in many shapes and sizes, for a variety of different functions and jobs. There are many different designs used in spade manufacturing. The term shovel or arrow in form is sometimes used interchangeably with spade, but shovels generally are broad-bottomed and better suited for moving loose materials, whereas spades tend to be pointed for use as a digging tool.

The most common spade is a garden spade, which typically has a long handle, is wide, and is treaded (has rests for the feet to drive the spade into the ground). An Irish spade is similar to a common garden spade, with the same general design, although it has a much thinner head. A sharpshooter is a narrow spade. A turfing iron has a short, round head, and it used for cutting and paring off turf. A digging fork, or grape, is forked much like a pitchfork, and is useful for loosening ground and gardening.

Digging tool
In gardening, a spade is a hand tool used to dig or loosen ground, or to break up clumps in the soil. Together with the fork it forms one of the chief implements wielded by the hand in agriculture and horticulture. It is sometimes considered a type of shovel. Its typical shape is a broad flat blade with a sharp lower edge, straight or curved. The upper edge on either side of the handle affords space for the user's foot, which drives it into the ground. The wooden handle ends in a cross-piece, sometimes T-shaped and sometimes forming a kind of loop for the hand.
Small and/or plastic toy versions of the same tool are used to dig sand castles on a beach or in a sand-box.

GARDEN SPADES
Long-handled pointed American Shovels penetrate soil well, but are mainly adapted to throw soil onto a pile from a deepening hole. Squared off English Spades however, are great for digging neat straight sided holes.
Spades tasks are many, including the small task or planting perennials, potatoes, and bulbs, as well as working in rocky soil, and making post holes. The ordinary spade is simply not adequate in tackling all these tasks. However, there are specialized tools that do these jobs in a breeze.

PERENNIAL PLANTING SPADE
The perennial planting spade is a special tool that has a shorter handle which is very useful for planting. Ordinary border spades lever out whole soil clods. You won't disturb neighboring plants with this garden tool. Its pointed blade cuts a precise hole suitable to the size of most border perennials. It shreds open even hard soil into loose material to settle around the roots.

ROCKY SOIL SPADE
A normal spade is impossible to work with in rock gardens or boulder strewn soil. Fork tines are damaged too. So, to penetrate stony soils and work within the confines of a rock garden you need this narrow spade with long handle shaft and foot tread?
The Essential Features of Spades & Forks

STRONG AND LIGHT MATERIALS
Wood is organic and needs proper care. A garden tool maintenance kit - includes linseed oil to condition wood, blade sharpening stone, cloth and keep-clean containers.

Although the wood structure and machining limits design shape, it does have down to earth good looks. Ash wood gives the highest strength to weight ratio. Moving on from hardwood there are ergonomic molded synthetic handles of polypropylene and, strong light-weight shafts of fiber glass and NY glass. NY glass is a new fiberglass/nylon composite; scratch resistant and virtually unbreakable (also a popular choice on long handled cutting tools). Wilkinson Sword use NY glass to make the shaft of their superb. The strong shaft is easily adjusted to a comfortable working height.
Tool heads are usually forged from steel and polished, or from carbon steel with powder epoxy coating. Some are of heat treated spring tempered carbon steel like my 'Spade of Spring'. The size of the tool head largely determines the weight. Carbon steel garden tools usually feel lighter.

JOINS
The joins between head and shaft can be a potential weakness to your garden tool. A single piece of forged carbon steel beats welded stainless steel any day.

HANDLES
Comfortable D shaped handles (collar and rivet fixture) have replaced the old T shaped crossbar handles (tongue groove & wood sprig fixture). You can wrap your fingers straight around the top of a D and grip along the sides as well. This gives better grip, control and easy sideways movement.

The shaft may carry a forwardly inclined handle for more leverage and comfort when digging.
If you suffer from arthritis or frozen shoulder, or wish to reduce risk of developing Repetitive Strain Injury then shock absorbing handles are for you. Easy - mate is designed specifically to avoid this injury.

FOOT TREADS
Foot treads are small platforms at the top of the blade. They steady the digging action and allow the boot to apply more pressure. They seem to rise then fall in popularity among manufacturers trying to get an edge. For digging apply down force to the blade through your boot and your weight over the top.

BLADE
English spades have squared off or slightly curved blades that steady the digging when compared to pointed American shovels. However the pointed blades concentrate down force.

BLADE FACE
The front face is often gently concave. This curvature concentrates force on the soil volume in front of the spade. The narrow Irish spade is an example with more curves on the face.

METAL
Polished stainless steel looks smart. It has low friction, is easy to clean off and resists corrosion e.g. attack by soil lime. However, steel polishing is a relatively time consuming manufacturing process done individually on each tool. Traditional high quality stainless steel production has met very stiff competition from China. Most is now imported and so the stainless steel blades are often welded to the socket or strapping. This results in garden tools that break too readily.

Clear advice from those in the know indicates that carbon steel is more durable. Carbon steel tools are lighter but not as rust resistant. If exposed to high temperatures like a bonfire, it may become deformed. Most garden tools are given a coat of paint to enhance their looks. Protective epoxy powder coats are applied to steel by spraying highly charged epoxy/metal powder at the electrically grounded tool, followed by baking. Teflon and enamel/gloss coatings may also be used. Every garden tool is made for a purpose. Do remember that spades are simply not intended for jobs like levering apart heavy rocks. Large underground stones can sometimes snag a single fork tine when you should resist the temptation to apply too much to force.

GARDEN TOOL RANGES
Most garden tools are available in complete matching ranges. 'Digging' spades and forks are wider than the 'border' versions. The digging tools should be treaded. However some garden tool ranges have become less distinct as manufacturers seemed to want all things for every range they made.
The Long Handled Garden Claw is an alternative to a garden fork for some jobs such as double digging. The digging fork is used for transplanting fruit and shrubs, and working over larger areas. Forks have curved tines are not suitable for digging, but are used for moving course compost material, turfs or hey. Forks with fewer tines are used for moving course material like hey. Long handled pitchforks are essential when adding material to bonfires.

Spades other use’s
In the oil and chemical process industries, a spade is a round piece of metal with a small tab that is placed in between two pipe flanges to give positive isolation from the center; usually to prevent cross contamination between fluids or to allow work on the line. The name comes from the shape: a little like a garden spade. The small tab lets one see that the spade is in place.

Certain ice cream scoops are called spades due to the relative shape. These scoops are used more in making hand scooped milkshakes or desserts where a lot of ice cream can be scooped at once and the typical "ball" shape of scooped ice cream (i.e. scoops on a cone) is not needed. The spade shaped head also helps scrape off the ice cream stuck to the sides of the cartons

The Differences between a Shove and a Spade
A shovel is a tool for lifting and moving loose material such as coal, gravel, snow, soil, or sand and is an extremely common tool which is used extensively in agriculture, construction and gardening. It is usually a hand tool consisting of a broad blade with edges or sides that is fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovels are usually made of iron or steel and are very strong.

Hand shovel blades are typically made of sheet steel, folded at the back to make a socket for the handle. This fold also commonly provides extra rigidity to the blade. The handles are usually made of wood, although steel or even lightweight composite materials may also be used, and riveted in place. A T-piece is commonly fitted to the end of the handle to aid grip and control where the shovel is designed for moving soil and heavy materials. This design can be easily mass produced.

The term "shovel" is also applied to larger excavating machines, such as power shovels, which are designed for the same purpose—lifting and moving material, see Loader (equipment). Hand shovels have been adapted for many different tasks and environments. They can be optimized for a single task or designed as cross-over or compromise tools to perform multiple tasks, for example:

• A coal shovel typically has a wide, flat blade with steeply turned sides, a flat face and a short D-shaped handle.
• A snow shovel often has a very wide side less blade that curves upward attached to a long, straight handle. It is designed as much for pushing the snow as for lifting it. The blade can be metal or plastic, but the latter has been used to offer a lighter tool.
• A grain shovel (also 'barn shovel') has a wide aluminum or plastic blade that is attached to a short hardwood handle with "D" top. This shovel has been designed to offer a lighter tool that does not damage the grain. Early models were made from timber.
• A spoon shovel is a long bar with a small oval inclined blade at the end, used in excavating deep narrow holes.
• A gardening trowel is a small single-hand implement for breaking up clumps in soil. Gardening trowels typically have strong, narrow blades with sharp points.
• A roofing shovel is a specialized prying tool which evolved from the use of spading forks and pitchforks to remove old shingles and underlayment as part of roof repair.
• In the 1800s shovels were called turf cutters and spades. They had cylinder-shaped wooden handles and metal triangle points at the end to dig with. Farmers used the shovels for digging up the ground on the farm and turning ground over to get richer soil. The shovels were handmade so they were all different sizes.
• Toy shovels are common playthings on sandy beaches or in sandboxes.
• Garden shovel used a spade like blade to dig into hard dirt
• A scoop is a shovel-like tool, particularly one deep and curved, used in digging, the act of using such a tool, or a rough measure of volume equal to the carrying capacity of a scoop.
• The shovel is one of the fire irons used in a fireplace. It is used to tend to the ashes.