Rant: My garden trowel snapped in half while I was digging up a Roman-era pot sherd in my backyard

I was carefully excavating near the old oak tree last Thursday when the handle gave out and I ended up chipping a piece of what looks like a 4th century bowl, so now I have to glue both the trowel and the artifact back together. Has anyone else had cheap tools mess up a dig like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

rivera.henry1mo ago

Honestly, I used to think any old trowel would do the job and that people who spent extra on the expensive ones were just wasting money. But after having a cheap one snap on me while pulling out a medieval buckle last fall, I totally get where you're coming from now. It's one thing to break a tool in the dirt, but when it chips the actual artifact you're trying to save, that's a whole different level of frustration. Now I keep a backup trowel in my kit, and I check the handle for cracks before every dig. The way you describe gluing both pieces back together, I've been there too, and it's a real pain trying to match the glue color to the pottery. So yeah, I'm with you on this one, cheap tools just aren't worth the risk when you're working on something that old.

ruby_sanchez451mo ago

Oh man, I feel your pain on that one. What finally worked for me was switching to a forged carbon steel trowel with a solid tang that runs all the way through the handle. The cheap stamped ones always snap right where the metal meets the wood. I also started wrapping the handle with hockey tape for extra grip - keeps me from having to death-grip it and putting too much torque on a weak spot. After gluing up my own snapped artifact last year, I learned to clear a wider area around the find before really digging in. Saves a lot of heartache later.