Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some of the following issues?:

What garden tools do you feel are badly designed?

Are there any particular tool you are unable to use properly due to a health complaint of any kind? (e.g, bad back, athritis)

Are there any tasks that are difficult to carry out due to lack of specialized equipment for said tasks?


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I will be sticking round these forums for a while, so dont be shy to post.
Cheers for your time guys.
Christian

"Christiansouth" wrote in
message ...

Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What's behind this research? Was it commissioned by commercial interests? Is
it for a college course? If so, what course?

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Christiansouth" wrote in
message ...
Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What's behind this research? Was it commissioned by commercial interests? Is
it for a college course? If so, what course?


Don't know how I survived my research career without the internet.
These kids today think all they have to do is push a few keys on their
computer to solve all their problems

Frank

"Frank" frankdotlogullo@comcastperiodnet wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Christiansouth" wrote in
message ...
Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What's behind this research? Was it commissioned by commercial interests?
Is it for a college course? If so, what course?

Don't know how I survived my research career without the internet. These
kids today think all they have to do is push a few keys on their computer
to solve all their problems

Frank

Almost.

An acquaintance of mine taught a senior level research methods course, and
informed the class that if anyone plagiarized anything from the web, they'd
flunk the course, no matter how high their grade was on previous work.
School policy. Two students thought she was kidding, and in their final
paper for the course, they cut & pasted stuff right off the web. They
flunked, they complained, they needed the course to graduate. Oh well.

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
Almost.

An acquaintance of mine taught a senior level research methods course, and
informed the class that if anyone plagiarized anything from the web, they'd
flunk the course, no matter how high their grade was on previous work.
School policy. Two students thought she was kidding, and in their final
paper for the course, they cut & pasted stuff right off the web. They
flunked, they complained, they needed the course to graduate. Oh well.


You might like this letter in todays Chemical and Engineering News:

I'm responding to "Wired for Learning" with 36 years of teaching
experience behind me, yet with something less than enthusiasm for the
technology-savvy teachers who were profiled in the article. It has been
my experience that today's teens know very little about modern
technology except how to use it. They know almost zero about the science
behind the technology. Most know nothing about electricity, don't know
how AC differs from DC, and don't know what electromagnetic waves are or
why their frequency matters. In fact, all they know about most of this
technology is which buttons to push and in what order.

Making teens push more buttons than they already do does not make them
wiser or more talented; it only gives them a warm feeling that they
understand many things that they, in fact, do not understand.

One sentence struck me as particularly untrue in this piece: "For
example, before computers became ubiquitous, when students were at home
and got stuck on a homework problem, other than a phone call to a fellow
student, they didn't have access to immediate help."

Are they all orphans? Don't they have parents? Isn't asking your parents
a valuable learning path for today's youth? I asked my mother for help.
My children asked me. My grandchildren ask their parents, and I presume
my great-grandchildren will do the same. Surely, homework problems are
about something that parents learned also. I hope the homework problems
are not about which button to push. If so, the teacher's syllabus needs
examining.

Enough said. Your readers will know what I am trying to express. I hope
so, or my mother would be very displeased.

Roy W. Clark
Murfreesboro, Tenn.

"Frank" frankdotlogullo@comcastperiodnet wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
Almost.

An acquaintance of mine taught a senior level research methods course,
and informed the class that if anyone plagiarized anything from the web,
they'd flunk the course, no matter how high their grade was on previous
work. School policy. Two students thought she was kidding, and in their
final paper for the course, they cut & pasted stuff right off the web.
They flunked, they complained, they needed the course to graduate. Oh
well.
You might like this letter in todays Chemical and Engineering News:

I'm responding to "Wired for Learning" with 36 years of teaching
experience behind me, yet with something less than enthusiasm for the
technology-savvy teachers who were profiled in the article. It has been my
experience that today's teens know very little about modern technology
except how to use it. They know almost zero about the science behind the
technology. Most know nothing about electricity, don't know how AC differs
from DC, and don't know what electromagnetic waves are or why their
frequency matters. In fact, all they know about most of this technology is
which buttons to push and in what order.

Making teens push more buttons than they already do does not make them
wiser or more talented; it only gives them a warm feeling that they
understand many things that they, in fact, do not understand.

One sentence struck me as particularly untrue in this piece: "For example,
before computers became ubiquitous, when students were at home and got
stuck on a homework problem, other than a phone call to a fellow student,
they didn't have access to immediate help."

Are they all orphans? Don't they have parents? Isn't asking your parents a
valuable learning path for today's youth? I asked my mother for help. My
children asked me. My grandchildren ask their parents, and I presume my
great-grandchildren will do the same. Surely, homework problems are about
something that parents learned also. I hope the homework problems are not
about which button to push. If so, the teacher's syllabus needs examining.

Enough said. Your readers will know what I am trying to express. I hope
so, or my mother would be very displeased.

Roy W. Clark
Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Quite a few people (including adults) apparently need a private detective to
help find the public library.

"Frank" frankdotlogullo@comcastperiodnet wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
Almost.

An acquaintance of mine taught a senior level research methods course,
and
informed the class that if anyone plagiarized anything from the web,
they'd
flunk the course, no matter how high their grade was on previous work.
School policy. Two students thought she was kidding, and in their final
paper for the course, they cut & pasted stuff right off the web. They
flunked, they complained, they needed the course to graduate. Oh well.


You might like this letter in todays Chemical and Engineering News:

I'm responding to "Wired for Learning" with 36 years of teaching
experience behind me, yet with something less than enthusiasm for the
technology-savvy teachers who were profiled in the article. It has been
my experience that today's teens know very little about modern
technology except how to use it. They know almost zero about the science
behind the technology. Most know nothing about electricity, don't know
how AC differs from DC, and don't know what electromagnetic waves are or
why their frequency matters. In fact, all they know about most of this
technology is which buttons to push and in what order.


This isn't a today thing. Back in the 20's just about all drivers knew how
to fix their own cars. By the 50's that had dropped drastically with the
introduction of the automatic transmission and electric starter which
allowed more women to drive. By the 70's only a handful of drivers
knew how to fix their cars, and today it's like 2% of the population if
that.

The story on the flunkees is interesting. I am not sure exactly how
you can plagarize facts or statistics. A fact is a fact whether it's copied
from the web or from a book. I suspect the real problem with the 2
student's actual problem was not copying and pasting from the web, it
was the inability to separate facts from opinions and create a summary,
namely, the skill of critical thinking. They couldn't think critically and
so when presented with the raw information on the Internet, they could
not properly sift it. My guess is the rest of the students in the class
also
used the Internet very heavily, but instead of a cheap hack and paste
they did some real research and rewrote the data. You wonder how the
2 students even got to the level to be able to take this kind of a class.

Making teens push more buttons than they already do does not make them
wiser or more talented; it only gives them a warm feeling that they
understand many things that they, in fact, do not understand.

One sentence struck me as particularly untrue in this piece: "For
example, before computers became ubiquitous, when students were at home
and got stuck on a homework problem, other than a phone call to a fellow
student, they didn't have access to immediate help."


The usual method was to not do the particular homework problem and
ask the teacher for assistance the next day, then do it the following
evening.

Are they all orphans? Don't they have parents? Isn't asking your parents
a valuable learning path for today's youth? I asked my mother for help.
My children asked me. My grandchildren ask their parents, and I presume
my great-grandchildren will do the same. Surely, homework problems are
about something that parents learned also. I hope the homework problems
are not about which button to push. If so, the teacher's syllabus needs
examining.


I think most kids wouldn't have asked parents. I never did. With no
disrespect to my dear father and mother, the problem was that nothing that
I was working on in homework had anything to do with what they learned.
With Mathematics, both parents didn't do "new math" and with English
they both did sentence diagramming and other such things that were
completely
out of fashion when I was in school. It's not that they couldn't have
learned
the methods I was being taught by, but it would have taken a lot of effort
for them and they couldn't have done it in a night.

Today, my oldest is learning Japanese. I am not a Japanese speaker. I
cannot help him on this. What I can do and I do, is spend hours
sitting with him making sure he's actually doing the homework, instead
of being distracted by the tv/radio/sister/snack/bathroombreak/favoritebook/
video/pieceofdustfloatingintheroom/etc.

Enough said. Your readers will know what I am trying to express. I hope
so, or my mother would be very displeased.


I understand what your trying to express. But I do not think it will be
solved.
Keep in mind that technology is like a pyramid, it builds on more basic
technologies, and EVERYTHING is all tied up together.

For example, I know all about AC and DC power. But, I know very little
about metallurgy and little about chemistry. If I had to go back 200 years
I might be able to build a generator and electric light bulb in a lab. But
I would not
know how to produce an electric cable (like for example a piece of Romex)
that would be safe to put in a building that people were living in. I would
not
know how to melt copper and extrude it into miles of copper wire nor
sheath the wire in an insulator. I would probably end up doing what they
did back then which was sheath the copper in cotton - which caused many
an electrical fire back in the olden days.

The people you refer to who only know how to push buttons are very much
like me. They know how to push buttons but don't know how to wire a
circuit that runs those buttons. I know how to wire a circuit that runs
those
buttons but I don't know how to make the wire nor the materials in the
button.
The guy who knows how to extrude the wire doesen't know how to mine the
copper ore from the ground. The miners that mine the copper ore don't know
how to manufacture a mining machine. In fact, the only people who know how
to design and build the mining machine are the very same people who are
pushing
the buttons that I know how to wire.

Now, I ask you this. The people designing the mining machines, do you think
they would know how to design a better machine if they knew how to mine?
Yes. But they would know how to design a mining machine even better than
that if they knew all about metallurgy and copper ores. And to know all
about
that they need to know all about what the copper coming out of the ore will
be used to make - the wires. And to know how to make the best wires,
they need to know about electricity, and circuits and so on.

Where does it really end? You are asking for the impossible. What you are
asking for is that anyone that does anything must know every possible thing
about it, about all that goes into it, all about how it would be used, and
on and
on. That's fine if the guy your asking this of is hammering horseshoes onto
the
hoof of a horse. It's impossible if the guy your asking this of is
designing a
car body.

There's nothing wrong with wanting kids to understand electricity. They
are,
in fact, supposed to get that in high school physics. But getting into
frequency
and resonance in electricity is getting into a specialty of electricity and
radio.
And frankly without getting into that speciality, you don't really
understand
electricity now, do you? And without understanding materials science you
don't really understand electrical resonance in wires.

And this isn't limited to wires. Take the modern average rubber car tire.
There is a whole science behind this that deals with materials and traction
and tread and such that you are ignorant of. All you know about the tire
is you drive into the tire shop and a guy mounts and dismounts them from
your car. So, you really aren't much different from those button-pushing
kids, are you?

Ted

In article ,
Christiansouth wrote:

Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What garden tools do you feel are badly designed?

Are there any particular tool you are unable to use properly due to a
health complaint of any kind? (e.g, bad back, athritis)

Are there any tasks that are difficult to carry out due to lack of
specialized equipment for said tasks?


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I will be sticking round
these forums for a while, so dont be shy to post.
Cheers for your time guys.
Christian

Look into old tools.

Bill

--

S Jersey USA Zone 5 Shade

"The destiny of nations depends on how we feed ourselves."
Brillat-Savarin
This article is posted under fair use rules in accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and is strictly for the educational
and informative purposes. This material is distributed without profit.
http://www.ocutech.com/ High tech Vison aid

Christiansouth wrote:

Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What garden tools do you feel are badly designed?

Felco hand pruners are designed to be easily repaired and have many
easily used spare parts. However, other manufacturers such as Florian
and Fiskars give you a free new pruner if theirs fail.

Another bad design are the pruners that won't cut a woody branch. The
branch scoots out when you try to cut it. Many Chinese knockoffs of
good tools do this.

Are there any particular tool you are unable to use properly due to a
health complaint of any kind? (e.g, bad back, athritis)

For hand pruners, few are designed for small hands or arthritic hands.
One particularly good pair for small hands or arthritic hands is the
Fiskars PowerGear Bypass Pruner.

I like ratcheting tools. They are more compact, more powerful and very
easy to use. In particular I like the Florian hand pruners and lopping
shears.

Are there any tasks that are difficult to carry out due to lack of
specialized equipment for said tasks?

I found very few pole saws that are easy to use. Most will get stuck.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I will be sticking round
these forums for a while, so dont be shy to post.
Cheers for your time guys.
Christian
--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Visit my Rhododendron and Azalea web pages at:
http://rhodyman.net/rahome.html
Also visit the Rhododendron and Azalea Bookstore at:
http://rhodyman.net/rabooks.html
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA Zone 6

Stephen Henning wrote:

I found very few pole saws that are easy to use. Most will get stuck.

You got that right. I just bought what I thought was a pretty decent
one on sale at the hardware store, and the blade is too floppy to do
what it is intended to do. The rope lopper doesn't have enough
mechanical advantage for me except on anything but branches with very
small diameters. The higher you try to extend it, the harder it is to
manage the thing.

So what is it good for? Getting tree branches off rooves, for one
thing, and I'll find something else useful to do with it, try to
remember to stay away from electrical lines, and prevail on my son to do
the grunt work with it if it can be done. I should have returned it but
was too tired to trek back with that huge thing. I suppose I still
could take it back.

Christiansouth wrote:
Hi guys. Im new here. Im looking for a bit of help. I am a researcher at
the University of Glamorgan in Wales. There is a bit of an important
project in development concerning garden tools. Dont spose any of you
people are interested in helping by just posting you opinions on some
of the following issues?:

What garden tools do you feel are badly designed?

Are there any particular tool you are unable to use properly due to a
health complaint of any kind? (e.g, bad back, athritis)

Are there any tasks that are difficult to carry out due to lack of
specialized equipment for said tasks?


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I will be sticking round
these forums for a while, so dont be shy to post.
Cheers for your time guys.

I am in my 60's, and they are are all just plain hard work, even a
regular-sized rake. I bought a little Mantis tiller with the Honda
engine, and can barely handle it in till mode, but it helps mix soil
better, useless for breaking sod, but comes in handy depending on what I
need to do.

I could use an easier post hole digger; they don't make one that I could
work with, don't have one of those but need one for a pending chore. I
also need something to break up cement and can't handle the kind of
sledgehammer you need.

I should have bought to at least try, didn't want to spend the extra
$$$, the dandelion & other weeder with the crooked handle someone
recommended here. I bought a straight one, and it is somewhat of a
struggle even though you don't have to bend over to use it.

I could also use a better bulb planter, saw an expensive one on the web.
I have two, one doesn't work worth a darn, and the second one should
be sharper on the bottom and the design (a crosspiece for stability just
above the top of the cylinder) makes it hard to dump the dirt out, but
at least it works sometimes if the soil is tilled and moist; if not,
forget it. I have a drill and augur, and that causes problems, too, but
sometimes speeds things up.

Shovels, rakes, the usual, they are work, but I can manage them the way
they are designed, would be better if I knew how to sharpen a shovel,
try to keep them clean, and no matter what tool it is, my back is weak,
and I have to pace myself. Power everything would be better for me but
those can be dangerous.

Probably not what your were expecting in the way of feedback. I used to
post under another name here.

I have about every tool you can own, don't have a hoe, don't seem to
need one, and they are all work because unless you have perfect soil and
not have to fight weeds, sod, rocks, buried debris, roots, and other
obstructions, all tools are work, and I have no idea how they can be
improved.

Christian

Hettie® wrote:

[....]

I could use an easier post hole digger; they don't make one that I could
work with,
[....]

http://www.altapower.com/Earthquake_E43_p/e43.htm

the Earthquake 1.75 HP Powerhead - E43 is truly a one man
power post hole driller. I bought my about six years ago
so I could plant trees and other landscape plants without
the pain of digging. I've got both the 4" and the 6" auger
bits. if I'm planting a tree from a 15" container I drill
a center hole and then drill tangent holes around the center
hole until I've got the diameter required for the tree or
other type of plant being planted. the auger turns the dirt
into a powder making it very easy to remove with a standard
post hole digger, almost to easy.

for transplanting tomato, squash, cucumber, pepper and other
garden plants I first layout my distance measurements then
drill each plant its own 32" deep hole. push the pulverized
powdery dirt back into the hole and set the plant. the
process creates a deep subsoiler effect allowing roots to
reach easily down into the earth for water. here's a secret
trick. put a pinch of each plant type's favorite fertilizer
about 10 to 12 inches down in the hole and by the time the
plant's roots hit the pocket of fertilizer the plant is large
enough to accept and enjoy the find.

and yea, I did put a fence post or two in with the
Earthquake - E43.

my usage recommendation is to drill slowly and allow the
powerhead to do the work. this way when you find a large
root or a large rock there is almost no kick back. do
run the motor wide open / full throttle but don't press
down with a lot of force.

Jim wrote:
Hettie® wrote:

[....]

I could use an easier post hole digger; they don't make one that I could
work with,

[....]

http://www.altapower.com/Earthquake_E43_p/e43.htm

the Earthquake 1.75 HP Powerhead - E43 is truly a one man
power post hole driller. I bought my about six years ago
so I could plant trees and other landscape plants without
the pain of digging. I've got both the 4" and the 6" auger
bits. if I'm planting a tree from a 15" container I drill
a center hole and then drill tangent holes around the center
hole until I've got the diameter required for the tree or
other type of plant being planted. the auger turns the dirt
into a powder making it very easy to remove with a standard
post hole digger, almost to easy.

for transplanting tomato, squash, cucumber, pepper and other
garden plants I first layout my distance measurements then
drill each plant its own 32" deep hole. push the pulverized
powdery dirt back into the hole and set the plant. the
process creates a deep subsoiler effect allowing roots to
reach easily down into the earth for water. here's a secret
trick. put a pinch of each plant type's favorite fertilizer
about 10 to 12 inches down in the hole and by the time the
plant's roots hit the pocket of fertilizer the plant is large
enough to accept and enjoy the find.

and yea, I did put a fence post or two in with the
Earthquake - E43.

my usage recommendation is to drill slowly and allow the
powerhead to do the work. this way when you find a large
root or a large rock there is almost no kick back. do
run the motor wide open / full throttle but don't press
down with a lot of force.

I wonder if I could handle that and how dangerous it might be. Kickback
scares me because I almost cut my finger off with my chain saw, doctor
said it would never be the same again. It healed up fine. You said one
man. This is one woman. A stubborn older one who doesn't like to admit
she doesn't have the strength she once had which wasn't all that much
even then. How much do they cost? That sounds great. Just like my
tiller which takes all the strength I have to use, but I'm getting more
accustomed to it.

I am doing things now I never imagined I could do though. Things I
thought you needed a man for. It is just too hard now to find somebody
reasonable to work for you. My family will help me, but they are so
darn busy, I hate to bother them unless I just have to have the help.

If I wanted to kill myself or break my wrists, I suppose I could use a
regular one if I didn't try to do it all at once, maybe work with a tile
spade. I think I like yours better. Would I get enough use from it to
be worth the money? I'll have to consider that.

You can plant with the tiller, just till, shovel out, and till some
more, but you can't go near as deep as that. Plus I want to set some
cedar posts. Myself. Maybe with help with my son. I hired a
landscaper, planted some roses I thought I couldn't plant because it was
a batch of 12, and didn't think I could do that many in one day, wanted
several more things done, they never sent me an estimate, nice couple,
left me wondering why, maybe my property wouldn't make them look good
enough? I think I was polite to them, but I do have to bargain for a
good price and know on their end it has to be worth it. Landscapers are
expensive.

It's weird. I had my heart set on some iron lattice trellises, kept a
photo somebody posted. Couldn't find anything like that. I printed out
the photo, showed it to them, they said they'd cost a fortune to have
welded. Guess what? I found them at Plow & Hearth, and they were very
reasonable even with shipping, made in China, of course. Now they seem
to be out of them again.

Today I was in awe. I don't know what they were fixing, but I stopped
to watch a neighbor getting, suppose a sewer line, drilled with this
enormous augur, never saw one that big, wish I'd gone back with my
camera, but wasn't in the mood to tick anybody off. They were having
some trouble with it, the area between the street and sidewalk is
extremely narrow, and they kept hitting something.

Thank you for telling me about that Earthquake thing and the link. I'll
check it out tomorrow.

Thanx for the posts so far, even from the sarcastic.

I was not very clear. This research is for BA Product Design and is commisioned for academic purposes only. To be honest, the books and articles that have so far been read concerning Garden tools are not as much help as we would like.
The research has shifted to dealing with people who use them on a day to day basis. This has included consulting professional gardeners, allotment owners, and now the murky world of the internet. This very tacky attempt to gain opinion is in fact one of many different ways we have tried.

Us "kids" wish it WAS as easy as tapping a few words on a keyboard.

Thanx again guys

Oh, and I would like to note that no publishable article is to be produced as a result of this stage of the research. So plagarism is not an issue. This is strictly to get ideas and to establish other directions.
Thank you