My trowel handle snapped mid-row after 8 years of use

I was laying brick on a retaining wall last Thursday and my old Marshalltown trowel handle just gave out. The wood split right down the middle, sent me off balance and I dropped a brick on my toe. I ended up wrapping it with electrical tape just to finish the row, but it kept slipping. Has anyone else had a handle fail like that, or am I just gripping too hard?

3 comments

3 Comments

brian_hart1d ago

Man, that sucks. Had an old Blue Grass trowel handle crack on me once, right in the middle of a long afternoon. Electrical tape is a temporary fix but you gotta get a new handle on there before it fails completely.

joseph_bailey1d ago

Actually, that Blue Grass trowel handle is usually solid ash, not the softer pine they use on some cheaper ones. The crack probably came from leaving it in the sun too long or maybe a bad batch of wood. Electrical tape is a temporary patch but it won't hold up under pressure, especially with wet soil pushing on it. A good hardwood dowel sanded to size and glued in will outlast the original handle if you do it right. Just make sure you coat the new handle with boiled linseed oil a few times before you put it to work. That keeps the wood from drying out and cracking again later on.

mila_murphy1d ago

I actually read somewhere that heat treating ash handles can make them LESS likely to crack, maybe Blue Grass skipped that step on this batch. Might be worth asking them about it before you go through the dowel work.