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My trowel snapped clean in half at the Cahokia dig site yesterday
Was working on a unit near Monks Mound, scraping away. Heard a loud crack and my Marshalltown 4-inch blade just gave out. Had to finish the afternoon using my backup, a cheap hardware store one. Anyone else have tools fail at the worst possible moment?
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maxm501mo ago
Start by checking the rivet holes where the tang meets the blade, that's where stress cracks usually start on Marshalltowns. The_nina probably had a similar stress point on her WHS, especially with the work happening in clay like that. If the break was clean metal like you're describing, it might be a bad batch from the factory rather than just age.
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jason_robinson3mo ago
Hate to be that guy, but a 4-inch Marshalltown is a pointing trowel, not a margin trowel. The margin trowel is the rectangular one. That snapping is brutal though, especially in that Cahokia clay. Did the break look old and rusty, or was it a clean metal fracture?
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