Maintaining your garden implements

It's hard to explain why I was sharpening my mother's garden tools in the back of my van in the parking lot of a strip mall, but I was. It's even harder to explain how my hand slipped, causing a hoe to violate my index finger, but it probably had something to do with being amped up on spring hormones.

Now that I'm back home, the big gauze bandage on my finger takes up three letters on the computer keyboard, causing trouble when I type the words tfsdtrhj or ffoisk.

So it is with humility that I offer the following tips on getting your garden tools in shape for spring.

Rusting Out All Over

Rust buildup causes drag on the blades of shovels, trowels, hoes and edging tools, making it harder to push the tool through soil. This can totally put you off gardening if the sight of halved worms isn't doing that already.

Tools operate way more easily if you keep surfaces rust-free. You can usually remove rust with a combined assault of wire brush, sandpaper, penetrating oil and steel wool.

However, the hoe I was working on was so rusty that I was completely covered in red dust after twenty minutes of hand sanding, and there was still no sign of shiny steel. So I fired up my electric sander and buffed the living daylights out of that baby. When I got down to silvery steel, it was sharpening time.

File and Error

A gardening tool's blade should be sharp enough to cut through dirt as though it were a young cheese. This makes chores go faster so you arrive sooner at the best part of gardening: beer.

You'll need a flat "bastard" file or "mill" file, a standard $7.00 metal file with a single-milled face on one side (single grooves set on the diagonal), and a double-milled face on the other side (crisscross grooves). These files remove metal slowly but effectively. They cut in one direction only, so you have to use one-way strokes.

Steps

1. Use both hands to hold the file. Pushing away from your body, make long, smooth strokes down and sidewise across the blade in a sort of sliding motion. The double-milled face of the file cuts most aggressively, so use it to form the initial edge. Then tidy it up with the single-milled face.
2. Try to copy the tool's original bevel. In most cases, you should aim for a bevel between 40 and 75 degrees. If the bevel is too sharp, the edge will bend and chip when it strikes roots or rocks.
3. Work until you have a consistent, smooth, shiny edge along the entire blade. Sometimes there are dings and pits in the edge, so it may take some work. Enjoy it. This investment will make your whole summer easier.
4. When you're done, spray the whole blade with "Pam" or wipe on light machine oil to prevent rust from getting started again.

Tips

• When you're sharpening, it helps to clamp the tool securely in a vise rather than holding it, however stalwartly, between your thighs.
• If you own a Dremel rotary tool, you can load it up with a stone grinding bit and cut your sharpening time to a fraction.
• Shovels and hoes should only be sharpened on one side, but edging tools, axes, hatchets, and trowels can be sharpened on both sides.

Love Handles

To prevent wooden tool handles from splitting, drying and distributing slivers, rub the gripping areas with boiled linseed oil once each spring. (You buy the linseed oil already boiled; you don't have to boil it yourself. I'll only make that mistake once.)

Barrows of Fun

Wheelbarrows get rusty and eventually develop holes in their bottoms. Prevent wheelbarrow burnout by sanding out rusty spots and recoating the entire wheelbarrow surface with rustproof spray paint in a fashionable shade of dirt brown.

Swell Done

If you've got loose tools, there is relief. When a tool's head has separated or become loose on a wooden handle, soak the tool's neck in a tray or bucket of antifreeze overnight. Make sure the antifreeze covers the section where the wooden handle joins the metal head. The antifreeze acts like a wax in solution, penetrating the wood fibers, swelling them, and then holding them in the new shape so that the head no longer wobbles.

Finally, if you're going to perform maintenance procedures on your garden tools, don't rush. If you must attempt sharpening a hoe in the back of your van, at least get the bumper sticker that says "If this van's rockin', call an ambulance."