Found a budget diggin tool with sheath

[metalmedic]

I was in my local Tractor Supply store yesterday and found these nice little diggers for $10! Very light and thin profile, almost knifelike. It says blade is carbon/stainless? They seem to be pretty well made for the money but time will tell.

 

[WV62]

I just started my 3 year with mine and it holds up real well. Now if you want to improve that little digger by about 110% just sharpen that notch in the tip.

Ron in WV

 

[GKMan]

Looks a lot like other ones I have snapped.. Finally gave in and purchased Lesche tools and haven't looked back.

That said a lot of it has to do with what type of ground conditions you are encountering.

 

[skookum]

Hi,
I`ld say that for a price of $ 10 there isn

 

[sprchng]

That blunt tip would be useless in the hard soil here. I often rely on the point of the lesche to spin and "drill" through soil to get through the crusty top layer here in non sod covered areas.
Might work well in well watered parks however.

 

[Hobo lobo]

I bought one similar to that one, its indestructible.

 

[GKMan]

Hi,
I`ld say that for a price of $ 10 there isn

 

[hartage]

Difference with a lesch to me is gravel. When there is a lot of rocks/gravel in the dirt the lesche you just keep digging. Find a rock, just get under it and pry it out, lesche takes no damage. The chromoly steel (4130) used will deform without damage (bend) 2 times the distance of regular steel. (Characteristic of the metal) Plus its hammer forged. Plus it's heat tempered (hardened). Plus the only joint is completely welded, the entire joint. The entire handle is steel to the very end. So.... that's where the extra price goes to and why it stands up to punishment much better.

 

[metalmedic]

Most definitely, it's not a replacement for a Lesche! For the money... the quality and durability of the Lesche diggers is tough to beat. I just was surprised to find these diggers to be designed in such a way that they were so well suited for coin recovery, almost better than there intended use....gardening. At only $10 I'm sure you could do much worse. I'm a metal fabricator/welder and can make or modify anything to my liking, but for $10 I thought I would give one a try.

 

[hartage]

Yeah, for 10 bucks you can't go wrong. I did some looking and the only real weakness these low cost diggers, well there's two. First, don't pry too much the shank goes only a third of the handle. The handle can separate if forced too much. Second, no sheath. Buy a leather sheath and your uncomfortably close to the lesche price yet still don't have the performance.

I did look at the 10 dollar digger. If not for the missing sheath I might not have a lesche now.

But try a lesche if only borrowed, the offset blade really does make prying easier. That same offset is also another surface to push on making it easier to push into sod. Same with the sharp single point as opposed to the weeding point. You might recognise the advantage is worth the small price difference if you take the sheath into account

 

[marcomo]

Looks like a shorter version of the Ames Planters Buddy. That was a nice digger for the money too. My wife still uses one of my old ones for gardening and a nephew has another one of my old ones for his new hobby. One thing I liked better about a $10-15 digging tool is you can aggressively sharpen it without worrying about all the metal you're losing over time with your expensive digger.

As others have pointed out, the tang (the piece of metal that goes in the handle) is small and not very deep on these type of diggers. How well it holds up depends on how and where you do your digging. You can't get as aggressive with stubborn items in the ground the way you can with Lesche/Predators. I don't know about this particular digger, but the Planters Buddy has a lifetime guarantee, I snapped one at the handle and sent it back to the company with the receipt and they replaced it quickly with no problems.

Everybody always talks about the Lesche, and it's a fine tool. But I want to point out that if you want a high quality digger made by George Lesche his company now is Predator Tools, and they are a forum sponsor.

If you can get by without the serrated edge, you can move larger amounts of dirt and make retrievals a lot faster with the Predator Raptor then any of the more narrow traditional Lesche styled diggers.