I am looking for the best file there is, in terms of HRC and all that jazz.

Gentlemen,
We need to watch the linking to sites of vendors whom are not paying members, as it is against BFc rules.
Thank You.
 
Did I do that? If I did, I am sorry, though I can't recall doing so...maybe I'm a little brain damaged from all those soccer balls to the face I took when I was younger. And thank you for the tip, Quig, I will try it out immediately. After I shower, for I am a sweating MACHINE, MA-CHINE, I SAY!! Okay, I'll see you all later. Peace.
 
Gorog said:
Did I do that? If I did, I am sorry, though I can't recall doing so...maybe I'm a little brain damaged from all those soccer balls to the face I took when I was younger. And thank you for the tip, Quig, I will try it out immediately. After I shower, for I am a sweating MACHINE, MA-CHINE, I SAY!! Okay, I'll see you all later. Peace.
Click to expand...

It wasn't you, I was the one that started the link posting. It won't happen again, though. It sure is a good thing you can't view the source of a picture, to find out where it came from. Otherwise that rule about the links wouldn't make so much sense. Oh, wait...
 
Oh, and Quig? The Cold Steel shovels...lets just say they are not exactly the best shovels in the world. They could very well be thicker and heavier than the original, but I would still go with the original just because it has lasted this long, whereas, the way my shovels are rusting, beneath my watchful eyes, I could probably have a rust pile on a stick, as someone so aptly put it, if I waited around 3/4 of a century and got back to my shovels. Quality standards just are not what they used to be. That's why I like custom makers. They do how they do, and quality will always ooze from their products unless they choose to mass produce and lower the bar a little for more money. I'm not saying factory is bad, I'm just saying that it is often subject to standards, standards that are very low in today's society. I will always be a fan of HI as long as kami's forge their sweat, blood, and tears into every blade, as long as they can look at their work and be satisfied with it. A machine, no matter how complex, cannot survey its work and deem it passable, nor can it deem it great, nor even exceptional, because it is...a machine, a functional contraption, a powered device, not an organism that thinks, plans, and learns. Even if we come up with a machine that forges better blades than we do (May the gods of the blade NEVER let that happen!), it will still have to rely on human input, fortunately. Don't get me wrong, guys and gals, I am not prejudiced. I simply prefer blades hand forged. If I am overwhelmingly wrong in your view, and factory made is better to you, than argue with me, I am glad to change my mind, but until sufficient evidence proves me wrong, I will uphold that factory made=subject to quality standards, flaws, and more, while hand forged=consistent quality, usually. There could very well be some bad tempered aberrations that call themselves blacksmiths that make terrible knives and tools and foist them into the public purely for spiteful purposes, but they must be very few indeed, and they are NOT the standard I have come to appreciate from custom work. Okay, I'm done. Peace out, everyone, and don't kill me mods if I accidentally, in the heat of the moment, bad mouthed Cold Steel. I am sure they used to have a hugely higher quality standard than they do now, but it has nonetheless, in my opinion, slipped down a notch or two. I could be wrong, it could be that I am maliciously abusing my shovels, and that is why they are curiously dented, but, because I am me, a weak little teenager with an aversion to violence, I HIGHLY doubt I would purposefully kill the edges of my shovels by bashing them against the big rock in my backyard. Because, unless memory fails me, I used my shovel ONLY to dig in loose soil and cut a few roots less than a quarter inch in diameter, way less. And there are dents in it...just saying, I expected a LOT more. Peace, once again.
David
 
If you want the Cadillac of military shovels look for a Swiss shovel.

They come in a fixed version:
1140910.jpg


And a folding version:
128830_ts.JPG
 
Do they come looking like the soviet version, or is square head the only way they come? Peace.
 
They look like the pics: the fixed version has the square blade, the folding one has the pointed blade.

One thing I've noticed, though, is that the foreign military e-tools seem to all have smaller blades than the US versions, which is why I prefer the US shovels.
 
Okay, just a few more last questions, what kind of steel do you think would be best for the shovel? Also, I forsee this shovel being used for digging in the garden, and hacking roots, so I really feel it is necessary for it to have the edge geometry of the soviet shovel, so would I sacrifice quality if I went with a really old (dated 1893) russian shovel, is the swiss shovel the only way to go if I want unbeatable quality, or was quality, not quantity, the name of the game back in the day, meaning, will it not matter what I choose so long as I choose from way back when? I'm trusting your judgment on this moreso than mine, because I appear to have a very skewed perception of what is and is not quality workmanship. I usually like what looks the coolest, not what is most efficacious for moving some earth. So, yeah, I'll wait on your reply, Punishment, and I'll see if I can go from there. Peace.
 
Well, most of the old tools were built to last. So long as there's not major rust and such. The "best steel" for a shovel head is what most are made of: a medium carbon steel that's hard enough to cut roots and soft enouhg to take getting smacked into rocks and such all day, day after day.

The Swiss shovels are top of the line from a looks standpoint, as they tended to use very nicely figured wood for the handles -- some of them I've seen rival a good rifle stock. The Swiss really went overboard making the nicest stuff they could for their troops.

Now I have to confess, shovels are one of the things I'll compulsively buy. I have a LOT of surplus shovels. Of all of them, I think the WWII and Korea-era US shovels are the best, and I don't like the earlier US shovels that have the T-handle on them. The handles are nice and hand-filling, while most of the European shovels have thin handles, the heads are thick (and heavy) and the folding mechanism is very robust.

While the Russians get a lot of press about sharpening the edges of their spades and using them to fight with, it's nothing new. I think men have used their e-tools in hand to hand combat since they were invented. In WWI, for trench fighting/clearing the #1 choice in weaponry was the 12 gauge shotgun, the #2 choice was the e-tool. Not rifle and bayonet, not trench knife, but the e-tool. Sharpening the edges probably started right after the very first hand to hand fight with a shovel between Ugg and Glugg the cavemen.

So, I'd get a US e-tool, and one of the original canvas carriers. They have two kinds, one has the wire loops to hang off a pistol belt, the other uses ALICE clips to either hang off a pistol belt or attach to a pack like the ALICE pack.
 
Got a question maybe someone here can answer: Gorog was saying how his shovels tend to rust. If his location is correct, he lives in Newark, DE. That's fairly close to the ocean, and I've heard that salt air can cause metal to rust quickly; Is Newark close enough to the ocean for this to be a possible cause of his rust issues?
 
Any place within 100 miles of the ocean is subject to salt air, and Newark, DE is only 30 miles or so from the ocean, and only a few miles from salt water in the bays.
 
Yeah, I don't know WHY its rusting, I just know it is. But, thanks to good old Punishment, I realize that I already have good enough shovels in the Cold Steel, seeing as they used medium carbon steel. Mind you, that won't stop me from getting one little piece of history to my name in the form of an etool of some kind, but, yeah, thanks everyone for the info, its pretty darn cool stuff, eh? I'll see you all later, peace.
 
Now, if you're RICH some day and you really want the ultimate shovel, have someone forge one from S7 or S5 tool steel (made specifically to take heavy impacts), with a desert ironwood burl handle.

Of course S7 and S5 are a massive pain to forge, aren't cheap in the size of billet you'd need, and Desert Ironwood isn't cheap, especially in the length of a shovel handle. So you'd have the best shovel in the world, and it'd probably run you $3000+ to have it made.
 
That is totally hilarious, because I was searching all over tarnation trying to find a decent shovel made of tool steel, and I could not find one, it was appalling to me that no one had the nerve to make a hugely tough shovel. I spent three hours of my sleep searching for that. It would be absolutely AWESOME if I could get a decent tool steel shovel for a low price, but, let me just say, 3000...not low price. Not low at ALL. I actually heard of a specie of wood under the cloak Quebracho or 'axebreaker', that could do 4800 pounds on the Jenka hardness test, but I never saw that result anywhere else but on that one site, so...while it would be cool if this mysterious Quebracho wood existed, I doubt it does. I have not found a single site that even carries 'normal' or 'more common' Quebracho wood. If anyone finds Quebracho wood, or knows of a seller on Bladeforums that carries it, please let me know (in a forum-legal way, don't get in trouble for me). I have been searching for many a month for it, with no success. Well, I'll see you all later. Peace.
 
I think a more common name for it is "South American Ironwood", it grows in the Amazon. I don't know if it can be imported or not, but I seem to remember someone getting a block of it to make knife scales out of and it was destroying their bandsaw blades. I think it has silica deposits in it, making it very very hard.
 
According to some dude who sold the Argentine Lignum Vitae to me, the ironwoods all have silicon in them. Peace.
 
This one shovel claims that it--well, no, the shovel does not claim it, silly me, the company that makes it does, but anyway, so, the company that makes this shovel claims this baby will shift some easy-won earth with a ridiculously easy to dig with shovel-head. It claims this thing can make digging 80% easier, unless my facts are fiction, because the edge geometry is so revolutionary that it allows it to slice through anything in your way, save for diamonds and other such materials, automatically finding the path of least resistance. I don't know what to believe, but, MAN, it is one beautiful tool. Lets be honest, Gorog, are you truly going to use three tiny shovels at once and look like a three armed mall ninja with scoleosis, or are you going to actually get some work done, buy one useful tool, and not break your back in the process? It claims that this shovel is of much higher quality, 33% thicker, 25% harder than the competition, high carbon manganese steel, possibly the same steel used in the Chinese Military Shovels. I don't know what manganese does that makes this shovel special, but I kinda want it. We'll see what dearest mother has to say on the topic. Until then, here it is. It looks like a top secret military project gone mass-production, like a...stealth shovel or something. Okay, I'm out, peace.
SHLF%20crop%20hi-res%2012-9-10.jpg
 
Speaking of shovels...

Here's one that might interest you. Made of Swedish boron steel. Hand forged (well, they use a mechanical hammer, just like the "hand forged" axes). Lifetime guarantee. Check out these claims:

"...All DeWit spades are forged to a hardness of approximately 60 rockwell; incredibly tough... Note that the spades are slightly tapered back from the cutting edge (cutting edge is the widest part) - this eliminates drag along the sides of the tool as it is thrust into the soil. All Dutch digging tools feature an open-socket (or strap-type) design for the handle attachment. This design lets the wood BREATHE and virtually eliminates dry-rotted handles snapping off just above the steel socket, a common occurrence with solid socket designs. Handles are secured with one or two forged pins driven through the handle front to back, locking the front and rear ‘straps’ together. All feature typical Dutch ‘T’ grip at the top of the handle.."

Here's a photo of one that's available in the US (not cheap at $65):

A10spade.jpg

DeWit Pointed Spade
The flat blade and sharp, pointed end make this an exceptional deep edging spade. T-grip handle. (some heads are painted black)
Head: 11” x 7”
Length: 45”

A link to the DeWit shovel forging factory in Holland:
http://www.gardenersfirstchoice.com/
 
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