Mud Won't Stick To Stainless Steel Shovels

Mud Won't Stick To Stainless Steel Shovels CLEANING EQUIPMENT Cleaning Equipment 26-5-6 John Hoff, Weiser, Idaho, got tired of mud sticking to his shovel every time he had to trench in a siphon tube to irrigate his sugar beets and spuds. "Out here, we irrigate everything, so we spend a lot of days with a shovel for company," he says. "If you have clay soil and that shovel is a little dirty or rusty, the mud sticks to it and you spend as much time cleaning the shovel as you do actually working." One day, Hoff noticed that mud doesn't stick as much to stainless steel. Right then and there, he decided to make himself a stainless steel shovel just for use around his irrigated fields. He made one and headed to the field. He found that he could work faster with less effort. When friends and neighbors saw the shiny shovel in the back of his pickup, he gladly explained all about it. Before long, he was spending several hours every week making shovels for them and others. He now sells them as Deer Flat Stainless Steel Shovels. "They're virtually indestructible," he says. "I shape each shovel by hand from a single piece of 12 gauge no. 316 stainless steel, the hardest grade made. The metal stays malleable, so if they get damaged, they can be bent back into shape and won't crack. I've had them run over with a big Caterpillar and they just pop back." Hoff searched all over for a handle that would complement his stainless steel shovels and decided that the best available was a standard ash wooden shovel handle. However, rather than riveting the handle to the shovel shank, he fastens it with super glue. "This helps preserve the strength of the wood, so very few of them break," he says. He stamps the year of manufacture and the name of the owner on each of his shovels so that if one happens to bounce out of the pickup along the road, it can be returned to the owner. "They're nice-looking tools," Hoff claims. He says one owner is so proud of his that he hangs it over the fireplace in the winter to display it. Hoff makes two different sizes of shovels - #0 is 7 in. wide, 8 3/4 long and #00 is 8 in. wide and 9 1/2 in. long. A #00 shovel sells for $54.99 and a #0 for $59.99. Add $5 to both for shipping and handling. He recently started making Stainless Steel Hoes, too. Contact: FARM SHOW Follow, John Hoff, Deer Flat Stainless Steel Shovels, 990 Jenkins Creek Road, Weiser, Idaho 83672 (ph 208 549-1232; Website: www.buyidaho.org/oilerup.htm).

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