Renovating an Old Garden Drag Fork.

 We found this buried in our allotment and it seemed a shame not to put it back into use. This tool did bring back memories from my child hood in Norwell Woodhouse (a hamlet in Nottinghamshire) when my father made one from a garden fork and we used it to rake the ground and break-up clods of earth after digging the garden. As the soil often needed working to get a fine tilth for setting seed, it was useful for breaking up larger lumps. Sometimes he ploughed the garden and then it was a good tool for breaking and levelling the furrows.

The drag fork and collar before treatment.

The stem of the fork (or tang) for mounting in the handle was relatively short and the tool that we found had a long collar to strengthen the joint. Unfortunately, the joint had proven a problem as there were several nails hammered into the wood inside the collar to tighten the fit. I decided to shorten the iron collar so that it matched the length of the metal tang and also as the top of the collar had been badly beaten, this was sawn off to give a uniform cross-section.

The fork and collar were cleaned with a wire brush and treated with phosphoric acid to reduce further rusting. They were then treated with Hammerite black paint and left to dry.

The shaft was made from hazel taken from our boundary hedge. This was about two inches in diameter. As it was cut in the summer, the wood was heavy and very green.

The piece of hazel used to make the shaft. This was about 48 inches long and 2 inches in diameter with a slight taper and a couple of knots but it did have a slight curvature that could be utilised in the design.

The bark and knots were worked with a draw-knife and some wood removed where the stem took a slight elliptical cross-section. This was further improved using a stail engine (adjustable rounding plane) in one pass. This was quite difficult because the wood was wet and stringy but with some perseverance it did work. After this it was left to dry before using the rounding plane to reduce the diameter to  38 mm (about 1.5 inches) ready to reduce the end further for the iron collar.

The hazel shaft after one pass of the stail engine.

The method of fixing the fork tang to the handle proved quite tricky as the previous attachment had been a failure judging by the number of nails hammered into the shaft to keep the fork attached. This was because the tang was relatively short and even with the long iron collar the leverage encountered in use was liable to be pulled out from the shaft. The method I used will hopefully overcome this but only time and use will tell. 

I reduced the bottom 84 mm of the shaft to a diameter of 32.5 mm by sawing a groove at 84 mm from the end and sawing around the circumference only deep enough to get the reduced diameter for the collar to fit. After sawing the limiting cut, I then used the stail engine to reduce the diameter as needed, finishing the cut using a carving knife. The final fitting was done by inserting the collar as far as possible and noting the tightness before filing with a fine wood file around the circumference. In this way I got the collar to fit tightly on to the shaft.

Having fitted the collar, the next job was to drill the centre hole for the tang. The tang was rectangular in cross-section (10 mm wide by 8 mm depth) so I chose the nearest auger drill size (#5, 5/16 th inch diameter). The collar was left in place to strengthen the wood whilst drilling.

The arrangement for drilling with the auger drill. The winding sticks were used to keep the drill in-line.

As it is important to make the tang-hole central in the handle, care is needed to ensure the hole is in the centre of the tang-attachment portion, particularly as the handle is not straight in both dimensions as will be shown later in the photos of the finished tool. Hence the use of a spirit-level near the tang- attachment portion as shown above. The depth of the hole was measured to include the straight and curved part of the tang to get as much as possible of the iron into the shaft. The hole was then carved to a rectangular profile using a 5 mm chisel and the #5 auger bit to clear-out the waste wood. The end of the shaft where the tang curved, a channel was carved to accommodate the tang. The tang was then pressed into place and the hole carefully filed to get a very tight fit. A modification was also made to fit a small bolt through the collar, shaft and tang that involved drilling a 4 mm hole with a high-speed metal drill. Finally, the end of the shaft was sealed with epoxy resin to help protect the end-grain from water and further aid the secure fixing of the tang.

The attachment of the shaft to the tang showing the collar, through bolt and resin on the shaft end. The external diameter of the collar was the same as the shaft.

The shaft was then scraped and sanded ready for treatment with oak dye and linseed oil.

A side view of the drag fork showing the collar, curvature of the handle and the top of the rounded handle. A small shallow knotted area was discovered when planing and that was repaired using hazel sawdust and glue. 

Renovating an Old Shovel

 We recently found a shovel or spade with the remains of a handle buried in the soil at our allotment in the village of Week (Devon). I thought this would be an interesting renovation to put a useful tool back into work. I checked with Percy W. Blandford's book, "Country Craft Tools" and found a reference to a "rutter" spade a "large and heavy tool for cutting drains". The one illustrated in Blandford's book has a length of 48 inches from the pointed tip to the top of the handle. However, I found other references on the internet to spades used by the Forestry Commission described as rutter spades with what looked like shorter shafts and having "T" handles of about two foot in width. They looked like the ones that were used to dig peat by pushing down vertically into the peat to make slices that were cut-out in blocks. The spade that we found was set at an angle to the shaft that wasn't designed to push down into the earth as a normal spade for digging. More internet research indicated it was more likely to be a "Devon Shovel", a hybrid of a spade and shovel used for both purposes and made in Devon and also called a "West Country Shovel". It was designed for digging and scooping action. It was used in Devon, Cornwall and Wales.

Anyway, I decided to go with the description in the book and make it four foot in length with a short "T" and perhaps just use it as a shovel but I'll decide that later when it's finished. Originally the spades were strapped with iron to attach the "T" handle to the shaft as they didn't have means to make a mortice and tenon for the joint. I'm not sure about that and maybe the iron strap was studier for heavy use.

I started with the spade, removed as much loose rust as possible and then treated with phosphoric acid to inhibit further rusting.

Spade before treatment and after the remains of the old shaft had been burnt off.

After that I found a storm damaged stem of alder and prepared this for the shaft. It wasn't ideal as the sap was rising and it had a few knots from side branches but was reasonable straight and thick enough to fit the spade collar (this was about 40 mm internal diameter) and much wider than most agricultural tool shafts. As noted in  Blanford's book, many spades had handles made from wood from copse or hedgerow and these were often far from straight. 

The alder stem used to make the shaft and "T" handle,

The first job was to strip the bark using a drawknife taking care to smooth-out the knots from the side branches. The shaft was then worked with a "stail engine" or adjustable rounding plane (see epub  "Woodcraft by Hand Tools" by Alan House).

First pass with the rounding plane or stail engine. The wood was too fibrous and green to get a good finish at this stage.

After the first pass, the shaft was left to dry for a week and then the process repeated to get the shaft down to 40 mm in diameter ready to make the "T" handle from the same piece of alder. 

The top of the "T" made from alder and rounded on the pole lathe to 38 mm diameter and a length of 170 mm.

The centre hole was drilled with a #11 (11/16 th) auger bit and the wood finally shaped with a spokeshave to get a sloping top to the "T". The tenon on the shaft was made by measuring the depth of the waste wood need to be removed to get to the diameter of the morticed hole. This depth was then cut with a kerfing plane set to 45 mm width and then chiselled in a sequence of a square, octagon and finally filed to a cylinder to produce a tight fit into the mortice hole.

Tenon on the shaft.

"T" handle showing the initial fitting.

The handle was then carved to shape and sanded ready for glueing. An ash wedge was also inserted into the tenon to ensure a tight fit. After this it was just a matter of treating it with linseed oil a few times and treating the spade with Hammerite paint to help protect the metal from rusting.

Finished tool.  Here you can see the angle of the spade to the shaft.

This will be my introduction to using a Devon Shovel as it will be useful on the allotment, probably to empty compost bins. It feels like a good balance and even though the shaft is thick, the balance and weight does feel comfortable.