Wilcox All-ProGarden Tools 202S 14" All-Pro Trowel for Gardening

Aesthetics? PISHAW! This trowel is serious business and eschews aesthetics. It's a thickish sheet of aluminum, balled up into a handle on one end and sharpened to a shiv point on the other. On top of this balled up handle is thrust a wheelchair handlebar grip in bright, you can't possibly lose this thing in the weeds, red. The benefits of this wheelchair grip are that it's real grippy! I can flail my little muddy arms all over the place, but this trowel isn't going to slip out of my hand unless I'm trying to throw it at a beaver or whatever little ground creatures keep eating my plant roots. I can then hose this mofo off and it looks brand freaking new! BAM!Let's talk about my soil. What I have here appears to be thick clay mixed liberally with gravel and spaced between large awkward boulders that are always where you want your hole to be. 90% of the time I need a hole, I thrust the trowel in the ground, and THUNK it hits a rock, over and over. Most trowels do not care for this type of behavior and either just simply won't cut through the soil to begin with, won't continue after a couple inches, and are distracted from their duty by the presence of any rock or pebble, diverting it off course, or most likely just preventing me from digging anymore. Sometimes they just break into pieces.This wilcox trowel slices through my dirt like it's butter! It does a great job of making a hole exactly the size of the trowel. The trowel does precisely what it is supposed to do. What it does not do that I hoped it would do is pull that same dirt out of the hole I made. This is due to the long length of the tool and the V point at the tip, it does not act in my soil like a scoop to remove the dirt from the hole. My clay soil will not allow for any forgiveness in the size of the hole you dug for soil removal. I purchased a DeWit victorian trowel to do this task. Ultimately, the Wilcox trowel is the correct tool for the job if I want to dig a quick hole or remove roots or a plant, for instance removing blackberry brambles in the forest, or trying to uncover irritation tubing, but I'll probably reach for a tool with a bit more finesse and scooped shaping for planting new plants and tucking soil around them, and in my softer raised bed soil.A pro of the wheelchair grip handle is that it's eminently replaceable-for minimal cost- and can be done by anyone without the need of specialty tools or a woodworking shop. A con is that it's hollow and gets stuffed with dirt which is super obnoxious to remove (again. clay soil). The muddier my soil is, the bigger the problem is.As for cleaning the tool, aside from the hollow handle, I've been using a sturdy nylon brush to brush the dirt off the blade, but I am not sure what I could do to damage it. It's a piece of sheet metal, after all, and in the grand scheme of things, it'll probably outlast me. I could oil it with boiled linseed like I do my DeWit tools, but I'm thinking it's totally unnecessary.I did need to file the edges next to the handle. They're sharp from the manufacturer. I have a ten year old that likes to help dig, and I didn't want the sharp edges to cut his fingers. This took maybe a minute or two but was worth my time for peace of mind.I am a small person and have no issue with the weight or handfeel of the tool, the full length handle creates a balanced tool and I didn't experience any discomfort during prolonged gardening tasks.It's not my only trowel and won't replace the others, but I'm glad to have it as part of my gardening tool team.

This is an exceptional tool.Before buying this, I went through trowels like crazy. I've had ones break after a few months, but usually the last at most a couple years. I finally looked up this trowel online, and after seeing the stellar reviews, bought it, mainly because I wanted something that was going to last me for years. I was pleased though that this trowel isn't just durable, it works much more effectively than a typical trowel. Like, the difference was remarkable. Using this trowel, I was able to uproot large, tough plants with thick, deep roots (like greater burdock, pokeweed) that I normally would require a large shovel to remove. But, compared to gardening with the shovel, I found that this smaller trowel resulted in less soil disturbance. This is great, as it'll help me to garden and do ecological restoration work with less disruption of the soil. The sharp edges are also very effective at cutting roots, which can be very helpful for removing plants with large branched roots.I've been using this tool for over three years, and I pretty much only use it and larger shovels.My only complaint so far is that the leather loop broke within the first year, and there's no way I can find to fix or replace it. Besides this, the tool itself shows almost no wear...I haven't even had to sharpen the blades, and I've been digging with it in gravel, cutting roots with it, for over three years now.There are some little details too in how this trowel is different from other trowels that make it useful. It's slightly longer, which allows you to get a bit more leverage. This means I'm able to do more without having to carry a blukier shovel with me. The v-shape (rather than a U-shape) to the blade also makes it good for planting acorns, nuts, and large seeds, something I do fairly frequently...you can place the nut in the middle and roll it down into the hole you just dug, and because it's a neat V, you have more control. The combination of the long blade and V-shape is also great for laying down soil, for the same reason...you can hold this trowel and shake the soil over an area and you have much more control than you do with a shorter, U-shaped trowel.Plus, there's a ruler on it! This is immensely useful, not only for measuring soil depth, but I tend to like to have a ruler with me when I'm working with plants, for ID purposes, and it's just a bonus to have a ruler with me on the trowel that I'm going to be carrying with me anyway.If I could suggest any redesign option it would be to redesign it so that it is possible to reattach the leather strings if they break. I would love to see a metal loop built into the tool itself, or at least, the plastic handle designed with a loop so that it were easier to reattach strings. This is my only complaint or suggestion for improving this amazing tool.

I had to replace an old trowel of normal design with a short shovel, a thin neck and a rubber handle. The neck was so thin and the material so weak that the trowel bent at the neck making it impossible to put the kind of pressure on it that was necessary. This design is brilliant. It is one piece of thick metal from tip to tip bent at one end for a grip and sharpened at the other for easy penetration. This causes the neck portion to be very thick in the direction of the most stress.There are three minor flaws in the design, kind of. The first is that it is kind of long so holding the grip means that it can be difficult to apply pressure at the other end. I could see this as being a problem for old, weak or fragile people. Even so, it's not hard to just take smaller bites. The second is that I could see the grip eventually splitting and coming off, which would make it hard to use due to the edges. If this happens, I intend to put a bicycle grip in it's place. And the final flaw is one that someone mentioned earlier, that the leather strap is secured only by the rubber grip. If it pulls out, there really isn't a way to attach a new one with the design as it is. None of these things bother me at all, hence the five stars. I'm strong so the length isn't a problem for me. If the grip comes off, I'll replace it with something else and I don't use the strap so I don't care. Worst case, I can just drill a hole through the hole handle and attach a new strap.I really do think that the simplicity of the design accompanied by the thickness of the metal makes it perfect for me, but I should mention that I hate yard work and avoid it like the plague so this should last a lifetime for me 8-).