Why an old tool deserves a second life

There is a particular pleasure in working with a tool that has already served a few decades. Much of the garden steel you buy new today is pressed and thin, while the heads you inherited from a shed clearance are often drop-forged, tempered and pleasantly heavy in the hand. That sort of metal will outlast most of us if it is looked after. A spade head bought fifty years ago may have half a century of digging left in it; the handle might have gone, but a handle is the cheapest and most easily replaced part of any tool.

Repairing is usually quicker than ordering a replacement, and far cheaper. It also keeps useful steel out of the scrap heap, which matters if you care about the sort of smallholding life where nothing is thrown away until it is genuinely finished. Most repairs need only a file, a bit of sandpaper, a rag and an hour on a wet afternoon.

First, an honest assessment

Before you spend time on a tool, look at it properly. Some are worth saving; a few are not. Take the head in one hand and the handle in the other and give it a gentle twist — movement at the socket means the fit has gone and will need attention.

• Look for cracks in the socket, the eye or the shoulder of the head. A hairline crack in a spade socket will open up under load and is usually the end of the road.
• Check for deep pitting on the face of a blade. Surface rust is nothing; rust that has eaten half a millimetre into the steel leaves a weak, ragged edge.
• Test the spring of any sprung steel — forks, rakes and cultivator tines. Bent tines can often be straightened cold in a vice, but a tine that has cracked will snap later.
• Inspect the handle for splits running down from the top, and for a rotten section where the head meets the shaft. Rot at that joint is the most common reason tools are abandoned.

If the head is sound, everything else is repairable.

Sharpening: the edge that pays you back

A blunt tool is dangerous. It skids off stems, bounces out of soil and forces you to use your shoulders where your wrists would do. Sharpening is a ten-minute job done well.

For spades, hoes and edging irons, clamp the head in a vice and work the bevel with a single-cut bastard file, pushing away from you in long, even strokes. Hold the file at a shallow angle and follow the existing bevel — usually somewhere around 30 degrees for a spade, closer to 20 for a hoe. Count your strokes and do the same number on each side so you do not end up with a lopsided edge. Finish by running a flat oilstone along the back of the blade to remove the burr you have raised.

Secateurs, shears and pruning knives want a finer edge. Use a small diamond file or a slip stone and work at about 20 to 25 degrees. Sharpen only the bevelled side of bypass secateurs, then lay the flat face of the blade on the stone once to knock the burr off. A drop of light oil on the stone keeps the filings from clogging it.

Do not be tempted to use an angle grinder on fine cutting tools. The heat will draw the temper out of the steel and the edge will fold on the first cut.

Rust, grime and oiling the joints

Rust is a symptom, not a disease. Loosen it with a wire brush or a pad of coarse wire wool and a little light oil, working along the grain of the metal rather than across it. Badly rusted small parts — a pair of old shears, say — can be left overnight in a bath of white vinegar, then scrubbed and dried thoroughly. Dry them at once, because vinegar-etched steel flash-rusts within the hour.

Once clean, protect the metal. A wipe of light machine oil over blades and heads after each use is enough, and a smear of petroleum jelly on surfaces that will sit unused for months does the same job more stubbornly. Oil every moving part: the pivot of secateurs, the spring of a pair of shears, the roller on a wheelbarrow, the ratchet on a hedge trimmer. Work the joint back and forth so the oil reaches the pin.

For wooden handles, sand away splinters with a medium then fine abrasive, then feed the grain with boiled linseed oil — two or three thin coats, wiped on with a rag and left to soak in overnight. This swells and seals the timber and gives a grippable finish that will not blister your palms. Never varnish a working handle; varnish cracks and lifts, and takes skin with it.

Replacing a broken handle

Most handles are ash, and replacement shafts are sold by diameter and length — measure the eye of your head with a rule rather than guessing. Rake and fork handles are commonly 28 to 32mm across; spades are longer and slimmer.

To fit a new shaft, shave the end down with a drawknife, spokeshave or coarse rasp until it seats firmly in the socket, testing often. It should go in with firm hand pressure but not need hammering. Set the head so the blade sits true to the handle, then secure it. Traditional sockets take a metal wedge driven across the end grain, sometimes two at right angles; modern tubular sockets may use a rivet or a collar bolt. Cut the shaft flush, sand the top, and oil the whole handle before you put the tool back to work.

If the old handle is sound but loose, do not simply hammer it tighter — that splits the shaft. Withdraw the head, clean the socket, refit with a fresh wedge and the joint will hold for years.

A simple seasonal routine

Put an hour aside at the end of autumn, before the shed turns cold and damp. Clean every tool of soil, sharpen what needs it, oil the joints and the handles, then hang everything head-up off the floor. A bucket of dry sand with a little oil mixed through it makes a good resting place for spades and forks over winter, keeping the blades out of the damp.

Do that, and the tools you repair this year will still be cutting, digging and pruning when the replacements you might have bought have long since gone to rust.