Buying a rake

I bought my son a new rake on Saturday morning.

It is a beauty with 16 steel tines on a heavy-duty welded head with a reinforced ferrule. The 57-inch length gives greater reach and avoids the bending involved with using rakes designed for more “vertically challenged” individuals.

The handle is a fire-engine red fiberglass. The color increases visibility to hopefully prevent it from being left at a worksite.

I was sorely tempted by the John Deere green model. I made the choice to go with red, based on not wanting to pay a premium for corporate marketing for household garden implements and the concern that a green rake is easier to misplace among shrubbery.

The fiberglass-handled beauty is sleek and smooth, reminding me of the sports car poster that I and every other boy my age had hanging on the back of their bedroom door when we were old enough to appreciate cars, but not quite old enough to drive one. Come to think of it, the same description would probably work for the model draped over the hood in those car posters.

The handle of the rake has a satisfying heft and sturdiness to it, while also being slightly lighter than traditional wood, something that adds up after a long day of yard work and will according to its marketing materials be less prone to splintering over time.

Bow rakes are a staple tool of all home owners. They serve the purpose of loosening and leveling soil and spreading out material whether it is black dirt, stones or mulch.

I was buying Alex a new rake, because he broke mine. After last week’s rain got the soil in my front yard nice and wet, he was working with the rake to smooth out a tire rut in my yard next to my driveway.

My rake was not nearly as fancy as the one I bought Alex. It was one of the many purchases made when my wife and I moved from our apartment to the first home we bought almost exactly 26 years ago.

That rake has been well-used over the years from helping clean up downed branches, to various landscaping projects in that house and the house we currently live in. It has helped smooth out base material for a paver project and has been used to mix bags of cement mix in my wheelbarrow. It has done its duty in springtime clean-up of dog debris and in spreading out coals on backyard campfires on summer nights.

A few years ago, a section of the handle broke off leaving it slightly shorter and not a smooth as in the past. As with any old reliable friend you overlook the imperfections as long as you can get the job done.

This spring, the wet, heavy dirt just proved too much for my rake. The handle snapped off cleanly at the top of the ferrule.

“Perhaps we can fix it,” Alex suggested as we surveyed the broken rake laid out on the table like the body of a loved one at a wake.

He has a point. The head is still solid. It would take some work to drill out the broken shaft and replace it with a new one, assuming I would get one the right diameter to fit in the hole. If you don’t count the time it takes (or the inevitable specialized tool you will need to purchase to complete the job) at slightly more than half the cost of a new rake it, the match works out if you squint enough. When I was a younger man with the decades stretching ahead of me into the distant horizon, I valued my free time less and would have jumped at making the repair - or at least attempting it.

Instead, I told Alex no. It just made more sense to replace it. Even if we did replace the handle, I am not sure it would ever be up for the same level of use as it once was — but then again, neither am I. Perhaps, that it why I haven’t brought my self to toss the head in the recycling bin. I stood looking at the pieces and thought about how my world and life has changed in the 26 years since I bought the rake as a young homeowner.

I bought my son a new rake last Saturday. At 19 he doesn’t have a yard yet of his own, but I am sure he will get plenty of practice using it in my yard until he does.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.