Hello people!! Happy New Year. I was out digging some post holes today and grabbed a set of diggers left by the previous owners of my land. The diggers bent on the first attempt!! The edges on each blade "curled". It seems to me that they may have been sharpened and overheated in the process. My question is what kind of metal are posthole diggers and shovels made from and how to temper them.

OOH Boy. Doesn't sound good. I've dug thousands of post holes on my ranches and have never worn a set out. I did do a repair on one for an old friend in Montana in the early seventies and used a chunk of bandsaw blade from local sawmill. Worked fine. No tempering.I've always been in rocky country and use a spud bar to loosen up the soil and basically use the clam shell type digger to remove the dirt.I have had to re-draw the point on my spud bar a number of times. I think good steel with no formal tempering should work fine.

Thanks! I just heated up the tips and hammered them out to the original shape, let them cool to black heat, and dunked them in water. Like you I'm only using them as a method to remove dislodged soil from the hole not dig the hole solo. It's unreal how rocky the soil is here in Ethel, Mississippi!!! Thanks again.

Last big fence job I had, I rented a hydraulic PHD. Took advantage of it, dug some extra holes- got them stacked behind my shed. I could probably send a few your way, if you want to cover the postage.

Steve

Last big fence job I had, I rented a hydraulic PHD. Took advantage of it, dug some extra holes- got them stacked behind my shed. I could probably send a few your way, if you want to cover the postage.

Steve

I`m betting you could fit quite a few holes in a flat rate box.Might want to take him up on that if your PHD fails again. :)

Gotta be careful about that; I oncet tried to re-use a "soft ground state" post hole out here in NM and I still had to use a stick of TNT to get it to go into the ground!

Actually the ground where I live now is rated to pour concrete on with no changes required; when we were excavating to put in the first shop floor it ranged from rocks that we needed a backhoe for to one place where we sunk a digging bar to the top in clean sand---all thanks to the Rio Grande and the arroyos.