Clean and Sharpen Your Garden Hand Tools

Spring is here, and it is time to get outside and prepare your garden and beds for planting. Besides raking the planting areas and removing dead leaves and debris, you can also prune away dead branches and clean up trees and shrubs. If you have fruit trees or flowering trees and shrubs, they should already have had their major pruning in January or February while they were dormant. When buds begin to swell on them you should only do minor clean-up pruning, because anything you trim away after buds begin to swell will remove this year's blossoms.

Put your garden hand tools in good condition. You probably cleaned them last fall before storage, but now is the time to examine them and make sure they are ready to use. If there are any rust spots, clean them away with steel wool. Shovels, hoes, forks, and any other hand tools should all be checked.

Garden tools become dull with use, making the work of cutting out weeds or digging much more difficult than it needs to be. When you are busy with your garden it can be easy to miss that your tools are becoming dull. Check the edges of your shovels. Striking roots and rocks while digging can cause nicks and burrs along the cutting edge of a shovel, and if it is dull or bent it makes any digging task tough. You may also have a dull edge on your garden hoe. Pruners and loppers get dull, too. You'll know when they need sharpening because the blades will not make clean cuts all the way through small branches. Tearing or stripping bark is harmful for your trees, so keep your blades sharp.

First, clean the tools well, using steel wool. To sharpen the edges, you don't need a fancy grinder. A couple of simple mill files will work just fine. A flat mill file is the tool to use for sharpening flat blades, such as a hoe or straight edge shovel or clippers. There are two kinds of flat mill files, and either can be used for garden tools. The single cut file has the working teeth facing in one direction, and the double cut has the rows of filing teeth facing in alternating opposite directions. Use a single cut file for most general sharpening tasks. A double cut will work for simple tasks, but it is especially good if the edge you are working on has deeper nicks or gouges.
The double cut will work these out faster.

Anchor the tool in a vise so you will have both hands to guide the file. Work the file in one direction, away from you, and maintain the original bevel angle. Your filing strokes should use the length of the file. As you complete one stroke, move the file up the blade for the next stroke. Work the length of the blade edge with the long strokes, and then go over the blade again until it is sharpened the entire length. In other words, don't work on only one small part of the blade and then move on to the next. You won't have an evenly sharp edge that way.

Another type of mill file is a curved or round file. Use this type for curved edge tools. Pruning shears and loppers need a round file. To use this kind of file efficiently, take apart your tool and steady each part in a vise as you work on it. Pruning shears usually have one nut/bolt that you need to remove in order to take them apart. Sharpen each half, following the original bevel. Tools such as pruners and clippers that work with a scissor action need one blade to remain flat, so don't try to put a cutting edge on a blade that did not originally have one. It's fine to smooth off nicks on a "flat" edge, but don't try to turn it into a cutter.