OldTools Archive

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263326 Gye Greene <gyegreene@g...> 2017‑09‑19 Re: Shovel vs spade and internet plagiarism
I'm late to the game, but one last poke:


From a pre-internet gardening book (Sunset, Western Garden Book, c. 1967,
1973 revision, p. 92:  "Shovels are designed for scooping, lifting,
digging, and mixing."  It seems to treat "spades" as a sub-class of
shovel.  The pointy-nosed "trench spade" (which looks like a WWII-type Army
trenching tool, and is vaguely reminiscent of the suit, in cards), is "for
digging in close quarters". The "spade" (no adjectives or modifiers in the
illustration) illustrated is square-nosed, referred to as a "standard
spade" in the text, and is for "digging and turning soil, [...] digging
trenches and planting holes, and pruning roots.  Some gardeners learn to
use it for weeding (sliding it along parallel to the ground with a slicing
motion) or breaking up soil crust (quick, shallow, closely-spaced vertical
slices)."

They also show a "narrow spade" for ditches, post holes, and etc., and a
"small spade" -- which to me just looks like a small shovel.

It notes that a spade should be sharpened with a file -- but doesn't say
anything about sharpening a shovel.


My inference is that spades are primarily for cutting turf, roots, etc. as
you dig; shovels are for moving the debris.  There's some overlap in tasks
-- but each is optimized for one or the other.

It's apparently a daily task for archaeologists, out on a dig (read this in
some "fieldwork" book; won't be able to find the source).

On that topic:  I found this link by accident --
http://arf.berkeley.edu/then-dig/2011/07/shovels-regional-diversity-in-
one-of-our-most-indispensible-tools/">http://arf.berkeley.edu/then-dig/2011/07
/shovels-regional-diversity-in-one-of-our-most-indispensible-tools/
-- which indicates that some archaeologists sharpen their shovels, also.


--Travis

Recent Bios FAQ