I was helping out with someone else's yardwork this morning (a bunch of us from our church showed up to help out), and a few times, the topic of shovel sharpening came up. I sharpen most of my shovels - I put a 45 degree single sided edge on it, from the top of the shovel. Going from a square edge to the 45 degree edge took quite a while with a file the first time, but after that, maintaining it is quite easy - perhaps 5 minutes with a file every few months. Or a few minutes with a file before I start a big project.
Apparently, nobody else has ever heard of doing this. But my shovel cut through hard dirt a lot better. ;)
So, do other people do this? Or are most people content slamming a square edged shovel into the dirt?
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Also, at the same time, the whole "muscle vs machine" thing got a good test. We were helping trench for irrigation. A crew of about 5-6 people were trenching the old fashioned way with pickaxes and trenching shovels (satisfyingly, I had to sharpen my pickaxe afterwards, and saw a few good sparks in the process of breaking out rock). We got... oh, 30' trenched. And, based on the rate of progress, someone suggested renting a trencher. In about twice the time that it took to trench 30', with 6 people, two of us trenched several hundred feet throughout the property. Just... kind of impressive to see the difference that a few horsepower of gas engine makes. There's no way we would have gotten all that trenched manually today. :/