The handle is welded onto the blade and the weld gave out. This is just after I put the 3rd or 4th wooden handle onto this hoe. It has been a very useful hoe.
I, of course, have a back-up hoe, but it's not as big. The broken hoe has a blade that is 8 inches wide. The back-up hoe only has a 5 inch blade.
and so it is not as effective as a hoe.
I also have another, different design with a rake and a hoe, but this is really small, and I use it mainly for mixing cement and mortar.
Finding a replacement for my big hoe is not easy. Home Depot, Lowes, Sears, Ace all only have the 5 inch wide hoes.
I finally found a wider hoe at Callahan's. They list this as a "Meadow Hoe", and it is 7 inches wide. $24.99. Not as good as my 8 inch hoe, but better than a 5 inch one. It's made by Ames True Temper. Callahan's had a nice selection of hoes.
Breed and Company, had a smaller selection, but they had a hoe that was 7 inches wide, like the meadow hoe from Callahan's, but is 5 inches tall, instead of the standard 3 inches tall for all the other hoes.
They call this a "Cotton Hoe". $26.75. It's made by Razorback Professional Tools, which is another brand on the Ames True Temper web site.
Looking over the Ames True Temper web site, they also show an "8-in Meadow / Blackland Hoe" which looks like what I originally had.
And the fellow at Breed also suggested that I just take my old hoe to a shop and have them weld it back together.
Update -- 27 July 2012
Both hoes broke. Within a day of each other. I was using the cotton hoe, and it fell apart; I switched to using the meadow hoe, and shortly later, the handle for it just snapped.
The "cotton hoe" has a red cowl at the end of the handle. This, apparently, serves no real purpose. The handle has a hole drilled into the end of it, and the metal hoe end has a shank which is jammed into the hole at the end of the handle. In this case, the hole expanded and the end of the handle split. When the hoe is placed on the ground, and pulled on the handle, the metal hoe end just comes out.
For the meadow hoe, the handle just cracked where the handle met the metal hoe.
In the case of the meadow hoe, the handle is jammed into the metal cowl of the hoe, and then two rivets are put in it to hold the handle in place. The danger, of course, is that the two rivets can weaken the handle just at the point where it has the most stress and pull.
