Taking a Old Broken Garden Trowel and Making It (better)than New.

A few weeks ago I got a busted old garden trowel at an estate sale for 0.50 cents. I decided to put a new handle on it and then did some simple work on the edges, to straighten them up a little bit, and some simple file work to show me how deep I'm digging. Then a little paint and bam its now better than it was brand new. Talk about value added.

For this project all you need is:

Broken Garden Trowel

Handle material-I used some White Oak I had already made into an octagon from a different handle project

Spray paint-whatever color or colors you like best

some sort of finish for the wood-I would suggest boiled linseed oil or an oil of some type, you will be using this often and film based finishes can contribute to blisters so oil based works better. If its good enough for knife makers then its good enough for this.

The first step in this project, like many recycling based projects, is to take apart the piece and clean it up as much as possible. When I bought this trowel it didn't have a handle so I didn't have to take it apart, but I did have do a bit of cleaning. I used an angle grinder with a flap disk in it. This quickly busted through the old paint and dirt. I tried to get most of the paint off this way but I did end up doing a little hand sanding with some 80 grit, to get in the cracks and crevasses. If you have a super rusty piece you can soak it overnight in some kind of rust remover, like rustolimum, and clean it up that way, it all depends on how bad the piece is to start and how clean it needs to be.

For this trowel I had a short octagon piece I had made for a different project. There were some small imperfections in this piece but since it was for me and not a gift or a for sale item its perfect for me. To make it I glued a couple pieces of Oak together and then cut it to a perfect square, turned my blade to a 45 degree and cut the corners off, this gave me the octagon shape I was looking for. To set this up for the garden trowel I drilled a 1/2 inch hole in the middle of the handle deep enough that the tang of the trowel fit all the way in. I then took the handle to the belt sander and brought the top in towards the hole a little bit, just to whatever looked good to me.

So this is where I decided to do a simple improvement to the classic garden trowel. I first used a metal rust inhibitor primer and some regal red spray paint. I put a couple of coats of red paint on it before I moved on to the next step. After the paint was dry I took a tape measure and made a mark from 1 inch to 6 inches at every inch. Then I took a small triangle file and filed a few small marks into the edges on both sides of the trowel. I wanted to do more than just paint because with use the paint will rub off and I can either repaint it or use the marks on the side. I decided to add these marks in because I've noticed when planting seeds it will often say to plant seeds at a specific depth, this makes it much easier to get there accurately. Next I covered the entire thing in painters tape and cut in the edges just a little bit and cut in at each mark. I then painted this area black. I think it turned out stylish and useful.

The last steps are to epoxy the handle to the trowel. I used just normal 5 minute epoxy. I mixed up a fairly large amount and filled the hole I had drilled for the trowel. I didn't fill the hole completely, epoxy doesn't always set up if you pour it to thickly. After it had set up for an hour or so I drilled the hole for the pin. I did make the handle for the pin before I epoxied it together. I then mixed up a bit more epoxy and put he pin in and used the rest of the epoxy to fill whatever was left on the main hole. Give this a few hours to cure, even for 5 minute epoxy it takes at least 8 hours to fully cure. I then drilled a hole through the back of the handle and put a small piece of leather through it so I can hang it up. I then applied some Boiled linseed oil on the handle and then added a little wax after that had dried on it. I have found for outdoor projects that Mink Oil, yes the stuff you put on your boots to waterproof them, works wonderfully for stuff like this. Its super water repellent and holds up for a long time.

Happy gardening