Why cheap garden tools cost more in the long run

The cheap set is cheap for a reason

You are standing in the garden section on a Saturday with a job to do, and there is a boxed set of tools sitting there for less than the price of one decent spade, and it is genuinely tempting, because all you want to do is dig a few holes and cut the roses back. The price is not the problem. The problem is that a tool built down to that price has to give something up somewhere, and what it gives up is almost always the steel and the handle, which happen to be the two things that decide whether you still own it in ten years.

What actually breaks, and why it breaks there

A spade or a fork nearly always fails at the join where the blade meets the handle, because that is where all the force ends up when you are prying at a root or working a rock out of a bed. A forged tool, or one with a properly socketed head, carries that load without complaining. A pressed blade stuck into a thin tube and held with a rivet does not, and you find that out in hard ground rather than in the shop, usually on the one weekend you had set aside for the job.

Pruners and snips fail a different way. They go blunt, and a blunt bypass pruner crushes the stem instead of slicing it, so the cut tears and heals badly and you are quietly doing damage while you think you are doing the plant a favour. The budget ones often cannot be taken apart to clean the sap off the blade or put an edge back on, so blunt is simply where they stay.

The question worth asking before you buy anything

Can I fix it? That is most of the decision, and it is a much easier question to answer in the shop than any argument about steel grades. Pick the thing up and look for a handle that comes off, a blade you could get a file across, a pivot bolt you can undo. A tool that is designed to be maintained is telling you what the maker expects of it, and a tool that is glued and riveted shut is telling you something too.

Handles are worth a paragraph on their own, because a timber handle is the part that goes first on a good tool and it is also the cheapest part to replace. We keep replacement handles on the shelf for rakes, shovels, hoes, mattocks, axes and block splitters, which tells you how normal it is for the handle to give out long before the head does. A rake head that is thirty years old on a handle that is two years old is a perfectly good rake.

The tool you can still be using at four in the afternoon

The other thing a cheap tool costs you is the hour after you use it. A long handled shovel that is badly balanced makes you bend further and pull harder for the same result, and if you are doing a whole afternoon of it your back keeps the receipt. Hold it the way you would actually use it before you buy it, because if it feels wrong across the counter it will feel worse in the ground.

The other half of that is the round trip. Two trips to finish a job is the part nobody costs in, and a snapped handle at three in the afternoon on a Sunday is exactly how a one afternoon job turns into a two weekend one.

Where it is worth paying, and where it is not

You do not need a good version of everything. The tools that earn their money are the ones taking real load or holding a real edge, so that is your spade, your fork, your pruners and anything else with an edge on it. Something like a scoop or a hand sprayer can be whatever is cheapest, because nothing much is being asked of it and there is nothing in it to fail.

And if you already own the cheap set, do not go and bin it. Run a file over the blades and tighten what is loose, then keep them for the jobs where you would rather not risk a good tool, like prying out a bit of old wire or scraping mortar off a paver. They have still got a life in them, it is just a shorter and rougher one.

Looking after the ones you do buy

Scrape the soil off before you put a tool away, because soil holds moisture against steel and that is how rust gets started. Put an edge back on a spade or a hoe once a season with a file, and do your pruners more often than that, because a sharp edge does the work instead of your shoulder doing it. A timber handle likes a wipe of linseed oil once a year so it does not dry out and splinter.

If sharpening is not your idea of a good time, bring them in. We run as a tool sharpening depot, so your blades go away and come back with an edge on them, which is a job most people put off until the tool is past saving.

Shop related products

• Supercraft Combination Bench Sharpening Stone. Coarse on one side and fine on the other, for putting an edge back on pruners and snips.
• Supercraft Mill File, Round Edge, 250mm. The one to reach for on a spade, a hoe or a mower blade.
• Supercraft Flat File, Second Cut 200mm. A finer cut, for tidying the edge up once the shape is right.
• Boiled Linseed Oil 1L. The yearly wipe over timber handles.

Did you know we also stock the Cyclone garden tool range in store, and it is not on the website. Garden forks and spades with the poly D handle, long handled shovels, garden rakes, a landscapers rake, hoes, bypass pruners, a folding pruning saw, hedge shears and leaf scoops, plus the replacement handles for when a good tool wears its handle out. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

The rest of the garden centre is in garden products, and the other things we do at the shop are listed on our essential services page.

Keep reading

• The tools a new gardener actually needs
• How do I use a post hole shovel?
• Five Katana 18V tools that run on the one battery

I would rather own six tools I can fix than twenty I cannot, and I am still working out which six.

Candeece