Homemade Hoe

Intro: Homemade Hoe

A nice, potentially free hoe that works as well as a store bought one.

STEP 1: Acquire Materials

You are going to need a piece of a leaf spring around 4 inches long. To cut it, I used an angle grinder with an abrasive wheel, but a torch or plasma cutter would be better. You will need a handle, and I used a 1"/1"/2' square steel tube (again, cut with angle grinder).

STEP 2: Tools

If you use the same design as I did, you will need a welder, cutting tool, and a bench grinder (optional, especially if you have an angle grinder).

STEP 3: Assemble

Weld the hoe with the back of the blade piece level with the back of the tube. If you wanted to, you could cut out a larger section of spring and make other parts on the back (root cutters, etc.). Sharpening makes it function a little better, but it doesn't really need it. Leaf spring is fairly strong, but the components don't really matter.

Comments

[sleeping]

Thanks for the nice instructible. Homemade hoes, are the best kind of hoes.

[littlemop]

Yeah, if you build them right, they are better AND cheaper, and just fun to build.

[Phil B]

Thank you for your first Instructable. It looks like a very practical project. I am guessing the leaf spring would be about 3 inches wide at the most. Would you use this hoe mostly to chop out weeds, or to move and smooth dirt?

[littlemop]

Well, this particular hoe would be best suited to moving and smoothing dirt, however, you could cut out peice of spring with the same shape on the front, but a v-shape on the back that could cut roots easily.