"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
...
About 20 years ago I bought a full-size stainless steel spade (made by
Griffin). It hasn't had a great amount of use.

Today I was trying to dig up an old variegated Euonymus. Its roots were
somewhat entangled with those of a 30-years old Chamaecyparis lawsoniana
'Ellwoodii' (which was cut down on Friday). I got half the Euonymus roots
cut through, then using one of the Ellwoodii roots as a lever point,
pushed down as hard as I could on the spade. There was a loud crack, and
something gave. I thought the plastic handle of the spade had broken,
but it was fine. The Euonymus was still in the ground. Pulling out the
spade, I was amazed to find that the blade had split horizontally about
3/4 of the way across, an inch or two below where it became the shaft.

How could this happen? Stainless steel isn't brittle, and having split,
why didn't it split all the way across?


Stainless isn't brittle like cast iron, it won't shatter into pieces, but it
will (depending on the grade) crack or break rather than bend. As to why it
stopped when it did, that's probably as far as the crack had got when you
eased off and removed the force.

Steve