Max Shovel

I  am taking  a Design & Engineering course at my school this period, and this is my presentation for the first Action Project. In this course I have learned to see that sometimes we don’t use the appropriate tools for the jobs that we do throughout our lives, or even our everyday tasks. I have also learned about wedges, levers, inclined planes, and how the tools we use actually work! The purpose of this Action Project is to re-design a tool in a way that it may be easier and more productive for elderly gardeners. In the previous units we have learned about a series of different  aspects that could make a tool easier to use for an elderly gardener, and now we must consider these aspects and put them in practice by re-designing a specific tool. We also studied a lot about empathy, and I realized that empathy is a virtue that permits us to learn from others, and to focus on other’s needs instead of ours. This virtue relates to this project because we are not part of the target group, so to design a tool for them we must learn to think and act from their perspective. The only way to achieve this is by empathy.

I designed a fiberglass round point shovel called Max Shovel. Its lightness and grip permits a gardener to have a less laborious experience when digging, especially in rocky dry soil.

I interviewed my friend Jimmy, who is approximately 65 years old and has been working on a  garden across the street from his house for about one and a half years, and I learned that a common problem that he faces is that his shovels after some time of use get dull, and this makes it very hard to dig, especially in rocky soil. Another problem with shovels, he said, is that the blade always gets loose after some time. Also that the shovels with wooden handles are very heavy and slippery without gloves.

He also told me that when he couldn’t use the proper tool for a specific task (because it wasn’t available to him), it would take him up to three hours more than usual. For example, before he had a hose for watering his garden, he would fill up buckets of water, and it would take him two hours to water all of his plants. Once he bought the hose, however, it would only take him half an hour to water his garden, and he could be doing other things while watering, such as transplanting new small trees.

Something that he said that interested me a lot was that “Mostly I use the pick and the shovel... I need the pick to open the holes because I can’t put my shovel into this ground...”. I checked his shovel out and it had a wooden handle, and a loose, dull steel blade.

The way shovels work is pretty simple. At first, it works as a wedge when going through the topsoil; then it acts as a lever, using one of the gardener’s arms as the fulcrum and the other arm as the one to apply force, and the dirt and rocks on the blade of the shovel as its load.

I went to a hardware store near my house called Ferrisariato, and there I learned that round point shovels are made for digging, and square shovels are made for carrying material from one place to another. I picked a round point shovel for this project because the idea is to improve the digging experience. I also realized that long shovels don’t have a handle at the end, because these handles are made to carry material from one place to another easily, and long shovels work better for digging only. I also did some research on the Internet and I realized that fiberglass is being used more and more for shovel handles, given that it makes them lighter and more resistant.

My Max Shovel consists of a titanium blade that is more resistant and lighter than the usual steel, as well as a fiberglass and wooden handle with grips and guidelines that indicate where to place your hands for more efficiency. Normally shovel blades become loose because the wood from the handle of the shovel starts getting old, so the nail holding the blade becomes loose. Fiberglass doesn’t lose its shape as fast wood, so the blade of the Max shovel will remain tight longer than others.  As an extra feature, it comes with a screwable extra handle stick and an ending handle. All you need to do to change from a long shovel to a short one is unscrew the long handle and screw in the short handle. All of these extra items come in a light-weight small bag that you can take anywhere.  

One of the obstacles that I ran into was that there is no store in my city that sells fiberglass shovels, so I had no way to try these out. However, I did a lot of research on the Internet, and based on the weight, the expenses, and peoples’ experiences I decided that this would be the best material to use for my handle. Once I made my first prototype, I realized that one of the most common problems when buying shovels is that usually people don’t only buy one, they have to buy many of different sizes! My design did not have a backup plan for resolving this, and it was something worth paying attention to. So I came up with a way to make two shovels in one.