Hot take: My backyard furnace patched a cracked garden tool head

The head on my old digging spade had a nasty crack after hitting a rock. I melted some scrap brass in my small crucible and braised it back together solid. Do you folks ever use shop skills for stuff at home?

3 comments

3 Comments

jason_hunt274mo ago

Why would you waste time melting brass for a garden tool instead of just buying a new one? Those spades are cheap and easy to find at any store. Messing with a crucible and hot metal seems risky for a simple fix. Don't you worry about the tool breaking again when you need it most? Is all that effort really worth it for an old digging spade?

elliot_king4mo ago

Yeah @jason_hunt27, it's about fighting our throwaway habits.

matthew_dixon1mo ago

A typical cheap spade at the hardware store runs around 15 to 20 bucks now. That's not a ton of money but it adds up if you're always replacing stuff. The thing people miss is that a forged head from 20 years ago is way better metal than the thin stamped junk sold today. My grandpa used that spade for decades and the crack was my fault for being careless with a rock. Reinforcing it with brass actually makes that spot stronger than it was before, not weaker. A new spade would probably snap in half the first time I hit a rock with it.

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