Selecting Shears and Shovels

For a variety of lawn and garden tasks, both shears and shovels are essential. In both cases, the tool is designed to remove unwanted plant and earth from one place, so you can put it in another.

Shovels

Shovels are another essential tool for gardening and lawn work. They too come in a surprisingly large array of shapes, styles and materials.

With the development of sturdy, hard, plastic composites many parts are now made of non-metallic compounds. That's helpful for making them lighter weight, but no commercially available plastic produced yet has the sharpness or tensile strength to use in the blade portion.

So, look for a metal alloy that won't rust and will keep a sharp edge against digging in rocky soil. It should have the right weight and shape for the jobs you anticipate. That blade should be attached well to an unbreakable handle. Strong carbon steel screws, correctly placed in hard wood are essential for keeping the blade attached.

Most shovels die an early death because of a broken handle. The shovel portion will often outlive the other parts. To stave off that fate, the handle should be not merely of hard wood, but somewhat flexible. A good shovel handle will stand up to hundreds of foot-pounds of torque.

Metal handles are heavier, so wood and plastic are more popular choices. Wood is great, but it's important to get a type that will stand up to the pressure put on it for years. A proper coating will help prevent the wood from getting old, breaking prematurely. Plastic handles have also come a long way. They make for a lightweight shovel, but still very few are suitable for the heavy duty jobs.

You'll almost certainly want at least three different kinds of shovel. The most common are the rounded, triangular spade and the square scoop. The first are easy to insert deep into the ground, but the latter type can shovel more earth in a single scoop. But the type not everyone thinks of is equally useful for specialized applications.

A long handled, narrow blade telescoping shovel is like a trowel with a handle. Your back will thank you if you supplement the first two with one of these. They're ideal for removing weeds without stooping, digging small holes and getting into those smaller areas that a regular shovel won't.

Shears

Though they have a relatively simple appearance, good shears actually have a number of criteria that all have to work together. Number one is the ability to cut. But that's a function of more than just sharp edges, important as those are.

Think of scissors. No matter how sharp the edges, if the two blades don't come together, cutting is impossible. That important geometric quality is even more important in certain shears. Some shears are really just strong scissors, designed to be used outdoors. But others are curved. Bringing those curved edges together with just the right angle and force requires careful design.

The only way to be sure that design goal has been expertly achieved is to test them. Fortunately, with computer aided design and contemporary materials, shears that work well are available in dozens of designs.

That leads to the next most important criteria, one that runs a close second place. The shears you use must fit your particular hands correctly. That individual choice is vital, since even the sharpest shears are useless if you can't operate them effectively.

In handle shears, the sort used to trim bushes or branches, they must be of the right weight for you, and have grips that feel comfortable and are non-slip. For pruning shears, the fit needed is even more precise. The style that has curved blades for trimming small herbs, flowers and the like often have circular blades in the handle section. A great combination for a wide variety of tasks.

Shears for All Occasions

Shears are among the most versatile tools for lawn and garden care. Though similar to garden scissors, they differ in several important ways - ways that make life easier for home lawn care workers. Ordinary scissors produce a shearing force by holding material between two hard, sharp edges. That's where shears get their name. But a modification of this scheme results in a tool called 'bypass shears'.

Bypass shears have blades that are designed to bypass each other, applying a shearing force as the cutting edges move past one another. They come in a dozen varieties, each with its own ideal use.

The largest type are grass or hedge shears. Very long-handled, they provide a long cutting surface to cut the maximum amount of material in one clamping.

Long blade shears are most like heavy duty scissors, about 8 inches total, often having rubberized grips around the straight handles for easy grabbing. Perfect for snipping flowers or fruit.

Pruning shears, by contrast, typically have two moon-shaped blades, one with a convex crescent, the other concave. The enlarged-oval handles and the blade design allow the user to apply a large force, needed for cutting the woody stems of herbs and small fruit tree branches. A variation has a set of circular, saw-toothed, metal blades that are great for grabbing or cutting larger branches.

Either long blade or pruning shears are often complemented by a handy spring and latch mechanism. The spring separates the blades when the user eases pressure on the handles, saving him or her the effort of opening the blades when wearing gloves. The latch is there to keep them clamped shut, and the blades together, when stored away. That added safety feature has a side-benefit: it makes them easy to hang on a hook.

Garden scissors are sometimes confused with shears, but they have very large open handles and shorter straight blades. They're used not for pruning, but for cutting twine, opening packages, cutting weed cloth, etc. An ordinary pair of house scissors could do the job in a pinch, but garden scissors are typically stronger and more durable. The blades are very tough and sharpen up well.

Though we often look on these tools as 'merely' useful, which they are, our ancestors regarded them as highly prized possessions. Often referred to today as 'ordinary garden tools', two hundred years ago they would have been worth a great deal.

But one thing is still true today that was true then. A good pair of shears, properly maintained, can last for 20 years or more. Tempered, forged steel, an adjustable screw to tighten loose blades and high quality plastic or rubberized grips that last are all essential. Look for quality, spend a little more and you'll be rewarded with a generation's worth of value.