Cold Steel Trench Shovel Unisex Adult, Brown (Wood), 762 mm

Handy to keep in your truck if you have the room. Has the longer handle so it's less awkward to dig with. Nicely built. Marbles fireman shovel sheath fits it too for protection. This shovel has 1 or both sides sharpened for chopping.

I have the shorter shovels of the same ilk and this one, longer than the others, just suits the bill for serious shovelling.

Super Schaufel, hackt besser als eine Machete finde ich!

They are special precise tools for property improvements ranging from digging a pond to making a storm shelter. They have secondary functions for camping and a wide variety of other things. As advertised the larger American 30" version of the 50cm (<20") shovel. There is a special digging technique that needs to be followed for long term use of these shovels to avoid breaking them. You can dig a little bit normally with them but the thick blades make it harder to penetrate soil in typical style and the stress will eventually cause the handle or blade to break if you try and build a large dugout shelter or tunnel like that. The proper technique involves using the shovel as a scraper. One hand on the pommel, one hand just above the blade. Then you scrape a thin piece of dirt like you are shaving chocolate with the tip. As with the 50cm shovel you are likely to need a minimum of a square of 3x shovel lengths to have enough room to scrape across the ground and start your hole moving downwards. It might feel like a slow way to dig but it can be very consistent and low stress and low impact and also (specially with the smaller 50cm shovel) allow hole geometries unavailable to larger shovels. Being the larger 30" version this obviously is going to require more fitness to be able to work with 8+ hours per day BUT being larger it can also dig faster at the cost of requiring more room to do it. So anyways you shave the dirt like shavings of chocolate in a fancy restaurant. Usually sitting or kneeling when going down, whatever works when going forwards or up whatever other direction there is. Once you have a nice pile of shaved dirt (you just let it fall and pile up loose) you scrape it up into a bucket and haul it out. No fooling with the shovel blade for dirt transport mostly. This has one very narrow precision use that it is perfect for and that is all. Everything else that you can do with it is sort of secondary use that may end up breaking it if overused. Done a lot of digging and never broke one with the gentle scraping or shaving, only with stabbing and prying. It still takes a lot to break one by stabbing and prying but if you are building a dugout shelter or tunnel you might. The manufacturer advertising is horrible showing all sorts of stunts that will very likely break the shovel pretty quick. Properly used this is a precision digging tool that can move literal 100s of tons of dirt without breaking like a more agile manually powered backhoe that can dig stairs, tunnels or a whole underground house. It has only that one primary narrow precision use shaving dirt to loosen it and that is it. Any other use even other types of digging may eventually break it. That said it has a variety of potential secondary emergency functions just do not overuse them! Truly amazing tool when properly utilized that can provide years of entertainment and utility building or digging anything you can imagine out of the dirt. Build a cave shelter then use the dirt you dug out to build a house on top! You can make whatever you can imagine out of dirt including highly efficient secondary combustion masonry heaters, rocket stoves, Russian stoves, Kakelugn, secondary combustion enhanced Dakota firepits or whatever you want to call them. Also good for portability but that is definitely secondary to me compared to all the other possibilities. Recommended if you already have the 50cm shovel or are getting it, plan to get fit enough to use it 8+ hours a day and want to have the big brother available to work even faster when you are fit and motivated enough to scale up. Also if you just need a more portable shovel but want something more robust than folding models. However it is good to have the 50cm version for finer smaller or tighter work. Do not think this is just better because it is bigger. If you get only one I recommend the 50cm version first.

Schnell war er da, ordentlich verpackt und unbeschädigt. Ob ich damit wirklich einen Schützengraben ausheben möchte - eher nicht .... Verarbeitung und Finish sind sehr ok, das Schaufelblatt wurde nach der Beschichtung rundum ballig beidseitig angeschliffen, wenn auch nicht ganz scharf. Der vom Spaten bekannte scharfe Absatz des Stiels, wo der Durchmesser zur Einführung in die Stielaufnahme im Blatt reduziert ist, findet sich hier wieder. Der gegenüber dem Spetsnaz-Spaten längere Stiel erleichtert die Buddelei, macht die Schaufel aber etwas sperriger. Das geringfügig größere Blatt wirkt sich weder störend noch besonders vorteilhaft aus, außer vielleicht beim Graben in rolligem Kies oder Sand. Beim Gebrauch (Mißbrauch) als Beilersatz verleiht der längere Stiel deutlich mehr Schwung bzw. gibt dem Hieb mehr Wucht. Maserungsverlauf war bei diesem meinem Exemplar für die Hackerei richtig, scheint aber wohl nicht immer so zu sein. Wobei das weniger eine Holz- als Verarbeitungsfrage ist. Schade, dass Buddeln und Hacken einen 90° versetzten Maserungsverlauf benötigen würden .... Schon "out of the box" ein vernünftiges Werkzeug, bewusst ohne high-tech Anspruch wie Klappspaten von Glock, Gerber etc. - gut und einfach bzw. einfach gut. Die scharfe Kante am Stiel werde ich entschärfen und der Lack am Stiel kommt zugunsten einer Ölbehandlung ab, dann ist das Verbesserungspotential ausgeschöpft.