Maintaining Wooden Handles on Garden Forks and Spades

Why wooden handles are worth the fuss

A good garden fork or spade is one of the few tools that can genuinely last a lifetime. The steel head will outlive most of us, and so will the shaft — provided you look after it. Ash, the traditional choice for handles, is springy, absorbs shock, and warms to the hand in a way that neither plastic nor fibreglass quite manages. But wood is not inert. It swells and shrinks with the weather, dries out in a heated shed, and lifts its grain wherever hands and gloves have rubbed against it.

A neglected handle is not merely unpleasant to hold. Lifted grain becomes splinters, and a shrunken shaft works itself loose inside its ferrule until the head begins to wobble — the point at which a spade stops being a tool and starts being a hazard. Fifteen minutes of attention once or twice a year is enough to prevent all of it.

Sand back the rough grain

Start by running a bare hand — or better, an old pair of tights — slowly along the whole shaft. Anything that snags is a spot that will eventually blister a palm through a glove. Pay closest attention to the two places that take the most wear: the grip, roughly a hand's width below the head, and the shoulder where the shaft flares into the socket.

Work along the grain, never across it, or you will scratch the surface and lift more fibres than you remove. A folded strip of abrasive paper wrapped around the shaft is easier to control than a bare sheet.

• Begin with 120-grit paper to flatten lifted fibres and smooth out dents.
• Move to 180-grit, then 240-grit, until the surface feels silky rather than polished.
• Keep away from the ferrule and the metal wedge — sanding metal just blunts the paper.
• Wipe off all dust with a barely damp cloth and let the wood dry fully before oiling.

Do not be tempted to sand a handle down to change its shape. As you remove material you weaken the shaft exactly where the load is greatest.

Feed the wood with linseed oil

Oil replaces the natural moisture that sun, wind and central heating have drawn out. It also seals the surface so the handle stops drinking water every time it rains. What you want is linseed oil — raw or boiled. Raw is traditional and penetrates beautifully, but it can take weeks to cure and stays tacky in the meantime. Boiled linseed oil, which has drying agents added, cures in a few days and is far more practical for a working tool.

Warmth helps the wood take up oil, so on a cold day stand the tin in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes and bring the handle indoors overnight. Apply thin coats with a rag, working the oil well into the grain, then leave it for twenty minutes and wipe off every trace of surplus. Three coats, twenty-four hours apart, will see a dry handle right. A handle that has not been oiled for years may want a fourth.

Never use varnish, paint or engine oil. Varnish cracks, traps moisture underneath and blisters the wood; engine oil never dries and will transfer to your gloves for months. Tung oil and Danish oil are reasonable alternatives, but linseed remains the traditional choice.

A word of caution: rags soaked in linseed oil can heat up and self-ignite. Lay them flat outdoors to dry hard before binning them, or drop them in a bucket of water.

Check the ferrule, rivets and wedge

The ferrule — the metal collar where the shaft meets the head — should sit tight and flush against the wood. To test it, grip the handle firmly and try to twist the head. Any movement needs dealing with straight away.

• If the ferrule has risen slightly, tap it back down using a block of hardwood between the hammer and the metal.
• If the rivet is loose, support the far side on a vice or an anvil and tap it snug again.
• Look at the top of the socket for the wedge. If it is proud, tap it home with a mallet; if it is missing, carve a replacement from a scrap of ash or oak.

Resist the old trick of standing the head in a bucket of water overnight. It swells the wood just long enough to fool you, then shrinks back further than before and encourages rot in the socket. Tighten the fitting properly instead.

Store them so the work lasts

How you put a tool away matters as much as how you treat it. Knock off soil with a stiff brush, dry the head with a rag, and hang the tool by its handle from a nail or rack. If you must stand it up, stand it on the head rather than leaning it against a damp wall.

Keep handles off bare concrete, which draws moisture out of the wood, and out of hot greenhouses or airing cupboards, which dry them until they crack. A ventilated shed is ideal. A light rub with an oiled rag at the end of the season, when the tools go up for winter, will see them through to spring.

Repair or replace?

Most problems are fixable, but not all of them. A shaft with a long split running down towards the socket, a cracked eye where the handle enters the head, or a break that has already been glued once should be replaced — these fail suddenly and with force. Replacement ash handles are widely sold and cost a fraction of a new tool; match the eye size carefully, fit the head, drive in the wedge, and you have another twenty years of use. Where the damage is only surface deep, sanding and oiling will bring the handle back to something better than new.