I broke the handle on my ditch spade a couple of weeks ago.  It has a wood, "D" handle on it before.  I've been looking at handles for it and trying to decide if I wanted another short handle or a full length handle.  I primarily use this for digging weeds (some of the ones growing in the field have 3'+ tap roots), but had also planned on using it to dig up several trees that need new homes.  Several nights ago I had an idea of what to do with the shovel to facilitate tree digging.  It occurred to me that I had access to what I needed at the shop of one of the guys who does body work for me.  I headed down there this morning and this is what I came up with:



The top piece is an 8ish pound slide hammer.  It fits into extension from a 10 ton hydraulic ram kit The orange pipe).  The connector (the silver piece) fits into the top of the shovel (I didn't push it all the way in, since it is not mine).  This set up should make it easier to dig at a diagonal underneath the trees and hopefully will make getting through the roots much easier.

I plan on borrowing the parts on Sunday to dig out a few smaller trees.  Unfortunately I won't be able to use this on larger trees just yet.  I will need everything welded together before I can dig around a large tree.  I need to use the slide hammer to pull the shovel out of the ground as much as I will need it to get it in.  I'll look around at some of the other shops to see if I can find broken or abandoned parts in the next few weeks.

hey James ,great idea.......i would put a patent on that one

Brian

Nice!  I needed that about a month ago, when I got an offer to dig up a large fig bush in what turned out to be dry, hard-packed dirt.  I had to give up after a lot of hard work and only getting down about 8".
Let us know how it goes...

Same concept as some log splitting tools I have seen.
You should document it James, just in case it has not been patented yet http://www.aipla.org/learningcenter/library/books/other-pubs/Documents/How_To_Protect_and_Benefit_From_Ideas.pdf

Nice. Necessity is the mother of invention.

I had two very large trees removed from my backyard this spring, I wanted to be able to plant where the stumps were removed.  I dug out around the trees for a few days before they cut them down and ground the stumps.
   I used a cutter mattock to do most of the hard digging. I bought it a few years back and now consider it an essential tool for digging in hard soil or where roots are involved. For those who don't already know, swinging a mattock is not for the weak of heart or back, it'll whip your A into shape in no time flat. But it makes digging possible where a shovels are useless.
James you strike me as the kind of guy who already has one of these, but if not, they are worth getting.

In my last job, I had to work closely with the company's patent attorney.  He was an interesting character (in less than a savory way) and I did not like dealing with him.  I might leave this idea in the public domain.

I have used a mattock in the past.  I dug a trench to run a drain pipe from the gutter to the curb with one.  I don't plan on using one again, LOL.  For all of the complaining I do about the field I am growing in, there is one great advantage to it having been used heavily to grow corn... It has already been cleared of everything.  There are no stumps, no large rocks, there is nothing really to get in the way of digging.  The longest any of my trees have been in the ground is 3 years, so I am not cutting through any large roots.  To be honest, based on past experience, I'll be surprised if I find any thicker than 1".  I bought a plow to deal with hardpan issues in the ground.  I was thinking I could attach a slide hammer to a digging fork to deal with hardpan in areas I can't get to with a plow.

There were a couple of motivations for this contraption...

1. In digging underneath some of the trees, I will need to dig at an angle.  The length of the cut is longer than the 14" shovel blade.  This should extend my digging range to about 24+". 
2. Cutting through the roots... as mentioned above.
3. In my supreme stupidity, I planted my cuttings in two rows @ 18" apart.  Most of them are large enough that If I try to kick a shovel while standing between them, I will damage the trees.  This set up should allow me to dig around the trees without standing in the trees.

Most serious shovel I have ever seen.

Yeah, they will probably be making these in China in no time, patent or not ;)

LIKE! So does the handle have enough strength to handle the torque of using it to pry?

Could you make me a chain saw?  JD is giving me h because he doesn't think I can lift it!  I can lift it!!

Suzi

Hey James go to harbor freight tools and buy/order what you need new most body shops keep all the broken stuff to frankenstein tools in the future.............OR 
http://www.midatlanticbamboo.com/bamboo-spade/bamboo-spade.htm    ..........OR    http://www.slugger.co.nz/slide-hammer-attachments.aspx             VIDEO  

Doh! Bummer. It would have been neat to witness the invention of useful tool. Well, you did invent a useful tool, somebody else just did also and is already capitalizing on it.

Brent,  we can only hope they send these from China.  The real rocket based on the macaroni prototype is going to cost more than I think I could sell one for... if I were buying the parts new.

Jose,  I don't know how this thing will perform.  I am not planning on doing anything tomorrow other than undercutting a tree or two.  I will have to wait until I have my own parts and I can weld everything together to try prying with it.  I may need to drive the extension tube further down into the handle slot.  I will report when I know more.

Suzi, the danger in a chainsaw is not whether or not you can hold it.  It is more if you know how to use it.  There are a lot of stupid things than one can accomplish easily with one.  I have done several of them.  Honestly, there a couple of incidents that, in hindsight, I feel lucky to be able to tell the story.

Anthony,  thanks for the links.  It does not seem like either of those have a very heavy hammer.  The guy from New Zealand seems to be working too hard.  Hopefully the heavier hammer and the lack of rocks will make my day go a lot faster.

Calvin,  I figure I had a good idea even if someone had it before me.

So today was a bit disheartening. 

I went out this morning to try the shovel.  I got the shovel in about 6" and it stopped.  I kept hitting it with the slide hammer but it did not dig deeper.  I kicked the shovel and was able to go down another inch without too much effort.  Then I realized the things was falling apart... and it did come apart.  Here is what happened.

In my rush to get out of the shop yesterday (I was running late for a wedding), I grabbed a shorter extension than the one in the picture above along with the slide hammer.  As you can see in this picture, the length of the extension is about the same as the handle. 



The coupling pin inside the extension sets in about two inches... so the handle on the slide hammer is longer than the space inside the extension.  So when I was hitting the hammer against the end of the slide, it was knocking the pin out of the extension and further into the shovel.



I will get the longer extension next weekend and try again.  We'll have to wait until then for the results.

I use a mattock also (for dealing with roots and rocks in hardpan), but I see another advantage to this sort of slide hammer tool.  Not only is the mattock very demanding of my physical energy and puts a lot of wear on my back, but it's also imprecise.  I mean accuracy of placement.  If you want to make your cut with any precision on placement... well, you can come reasonably close swinging one of those things early on in the session, but after an hour or so of swinging, I find I'm not very precise.  In contrast, a shovel blade with a slide hammer looks as though you could be reasonably precise.  (And around figs, I'd like to be precise... I've never used the mattock close to anything I wanted to keep... just for clearing out garbage trees and shrubs, when I wanted to get rid of them).

Seems like a very nice idea James.  I hope the repair/refinement you're making works out well.  Good luck (and I'm looking forward to hearing the outcome next week).

Mike   central NY state, zone 5 

p.s.  I also sometimes use a 16 pound Pinch Point bar for similar work.  (Or a 12 pounder for lighter work).  It's more accurate than the mattock, but similarly demanding of my back.  Also, the tip tends to blunt more quickly (maybe it's cheaper, less durable steel), so more time on the grinder.

$175 for this one, don't imagine they sell very many:
http://www.midatlanticbamboo.com/bamboo-spade/bamboo-spade.htm

Thanks for sharing this idea, I may make one myself this winter.  Dad has lots of "stuff" I might scrounge up parts from and also a friend's shop.

My most interesting acquisition of tools one time was while at a grocery store.  I noticed a guy getting into a pickup next to me and he had various things in the back that were obviously destined for the scrap/recycling yard.  I had misplaced a big pry bar recently and noticed he had a couple of homemade ones in the back along with a lot of other odd stuff that I probably could have found use for.  Iron prices were about $.08/pound at the time and I figured he would get a couple of bucks for the two pry bars so I offered him $5 and he accepted.  Axles make pretty good pry bars, FYI.

I'm glad you bumped this up Harvey,

I was coming online to give an update.  For the most part, I think this idea is a FAIL!  Or at least it has limited benefits.  A 10 pound slide hammer just doesn't come close to having the same effectiveness of a 200# person jumping on the shovel.  It took a lot of effort to fully bury the blade in the dirt.  I think I will find a way to attach a blade to the hydraulic bucket on the tractor instead.

~james

James, I don't agree.

I'm currently over 200 pounds and I've driven in hundreds of 2" square tree stakes in the ground using a hand-held post driver.  I know that if I could jump on the end of a stake that it would not drive it into the ground.  Same for driving something such as a nail (if it had a big enough head for me to jump on it without going through my shoe).  Mass x velocity squared = force and you just can't jump on a shovel fast enough to create the level of energy from a properly designed sliding shovel handle.  There needs to be the right weight used so that it can still be slid quickly.  To use the post driver as an example, perhaps something of 15-25 pounds should work well, depending on one's weight and strength.

My kids gave me a shovel with a fiberglass handle several years ago. It has proved to be indestructible, so far.

James,
     Could have used that device about 5 years ago trying to move a 1 yr old fig tree from point A to point B.  Destroyed my best Ames garden spade by using a 10lb. sledge hammer on the end of the shovel trying to sever the main tap root.  Got the tree out, but had to throw the spade in the dumpster.

I have lots of different shovels and lots of them last very well.  I use shovels a lot.  Still, digging up trees and cutting through roots can be a lot of hard work.  I just remembered that Jarred, founder of bananas.org posted about this took several years ago.  He liked it very well and made extensive use of it to dig up plants when he was moving.  It's pretty expensive!

http://www.dynadiggr.com/

Christmas gift for me?? :)
http://www.amazon.com/Neiko-Industrial-Grade-Electric-Demolition-Hammer/dp/B000K7U3G4

Makita has a nice one and has a clay spade took, but twice as much $

I have"that" one from Bosch with a "clay spade". Don't use it a lot, but when I need it, I really need it.

That seems like a much better option than the slide hammer.  Merry Christmas, Harvey.

Figive me if I'm stating the obvious but you do know that soaking the ground makes the clay soft, right?  it doesn't help with the roots of course...   But you can use a pressure jet to blast away clay soil once it's been soaked.