I absolutely love modified hand tools.

The sort of things that someone has made or changed to do a very specific piece of work.

So feast your eyes on this little beauty.

Today I’ve enjoyed some time with two individuals who repair broken sewers for a living.

It was great.

Nobody spoke about the wonders of AI. It felt like an honest days work, doing something genuinely useful.

Believe me, if you can’t flush the toilet in the house your priorities very rapidly realign to the more practical side of life…

Anyway, amongst the high tech drain cameras, epoxy resin drain lining sleeves, pressure testers and the suchlike, they had hand tools.

Because you can’t get away from digging.

Digging is living (in my books).

Here’s some pictures of the beautiful little tool they had created for doing just the job it was required for, breaking through hard ground in tight spaces.

Some things to enjoy:

• A heavy steel pole as the shaft.
• Not as heavy as a solid steel bar, but heavy enough to smash through hard ground.
• A spade / cutting head about 90mm square welded on the bottom of the pole.
• With just the suggestion of turned up sides and slight shovel tendencies (otherwise it would be a chisel).
• And, a lovely bend in the pole.
• Someone has thought about this, and built exactly what they needed.

Enjoy these pictures.

PS. I can’t imagine there’s anyone else in the world that finds this as interesting as me.

If you do, I’ve been planning to write something about a shovel called a Forestry Commission Rutter I saw recently.

Now that’s a sight to behold