toolz @ the manor

kymber here first to let you all know that our internet has been on the blink for the past several days - seems to be tip-tidy now tho! i will hit up all of your blogs and catch up on all of your posts during this evening and tomorrow! i hope that all of you are well. anyway - here' jambaloney:


jambaloney here!

sorry to have been off the blog for so long, but we have been going full tilt here, plus we added frankie blue eyes and i had the trip to ottawa... man, it is the middle of august ALREADY!!! ...this is a post i started almost a month ago - better late than never ;-)) ?? mostly about hand tools, with a nod to gorges grouse ;-))

so as i was digging the trench, i found that after a while, the tools get slippery as the handles get covered with mud and water - no matter, i bought some hockey tape a while back just for this problem....

 

i had found an old sledgehammer head in the basement when we moved in, i bought a handle for it recently which was a good thing because i needed it to smash rocks as the trench got deeper. i taped the handles of the pick and sledge - NICE!!

                                              

i use that pick all the time - and eventually, this happened.....

                                         

yep, broke the handle and nearly rattled all my teeth loose in the process.  hit a large rock hidden by clay square on.  it's the kind of thing that is bound to happen. fortunately, the pick was here when i arrived to, it was old as well. the first handle was cracked... i taped it, but it broke and i replaced it with the hickory handle you see above. that handles lasted about a year. the head is old enough to be worth something. i find the  alloys used in today's tools are crappy, you can tell by looking at the metal after it breaks. i broke this fork while building the huggie culture, notice the way it snapped, NOT fine steel.

                                    

here is a crappy pick buddy left ... steel snapped, not the handle (i can barely call it steel, more like a cast iron alloy of a sort), it is useful as a lightweight pick now that the weight is cut down ;-))

                                 

here is a third next to the other two on the right - a maddock that i busted clearing ice last winter. the steel in these is crap..

however the following tools are mint, on the top is a trench tool that my step-dad ted gave me, on the bottom is a wide pronged fork that came from my grandmother - each prong can be individually removed... no garbage cast metal here!

                           

back to the broken pickaxe, i could only get a handle with a plastic flare on it, still, it should do the trick.

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to drill out the  old handle i turn to powertool help - trusty ryobi 18v drill and an irwin speedbor max bit ( i got this kit on sale, they are fantastic!!))

a normally hard job, takes minutes..

all done!!

handle on and ready to go!!

sky pic for helga...

trout for pp...

and a scrutty project manager for winston ;-))

cheers all!!