Nick Maclaren says...

| In the past we've had the cheap all metal ones which bend
| at the neck or all plastic ones which just snap. You get
| what you pay for.

No, you don't. I have been looking for a similar one with a
(c. 1') long handle for a long time, and everything expensive I
have seen has been gimmicky.

The one I have nearly worn out I bought in Woolworths in the
1960s :-)


Well I'd recommend mine anyway, it is good and solid, and
it wasn't cheap. Can't remember how much but probably about
5 times the price of the basic pressed steel ones. While
there is no guarantee that an expensive one is good, I
think it is accurate to say that cheap ones are invariably
poor quality. Perhaps it depends how much leverage you
think it should be reasonable to apply and for the tool to
withstand? I've broken or bent every cheap hand trowel I've
ever owned.

There does seem to be a lot of gimmicky garden tools for
sale nowadays e.g. the various ranges with detachable
shafts. They are expensive but look a tad flimsy to me.
Frankly I can't see the benefit of sharing a shaft between
several tools.

Speaking of flimsy and bad design. Last year I bought a
small mains powered electric rotovator to hoe between the
vegetable rows and for the Mrs to use in the flower beds.
It was ok but jammed when it hit any rocks about an inch in
size. It has had no more than about 2 hours total use.
The machine is now just out of guarantee and the damn thing
has packed up - the blades don't spin any more.

I took it to bits expecting to find a drive belt had come
off. However I discovered that it did not use such tried
and trusted technology. Instead the electric motor drove a
metal screw cog against a nylon cog. Teeth completely
shredded off the nylon cog. I could not believe such a poor
design had got beyond the drawing board. Anyone with half a
brain could predict the machine would fail. Just hit a few
rocks (every garden has a few rocks!) and the nylon teeth
get stripped.

Anyone thinking of buying one of these things be warned!
They are crap!
--
David in Normandy.
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