Help, my garden fork is........forked!

One tine on my garden fork is bent out of line - owing to it catching under a root or boulder.

Question, how can I bend the tine back without damaging it or weakening it? I only have a small propane plumber's torch for heating the metal, which I suspect won't get it very hot.

The fork is made by Wilkinson Sword and the metal is steel - not stainless - there is surface rust on the top and where the handle joins, but not on the tines themselves which stay clean and bright.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Don't heat it as that might reduce the temper and make it permanently weak. Just use a scaffold pole to bend it back.

I have straightened tines that I have bent by using my bench vice to hold the bent tine and bending it straight using the leverage of the handle. I haven’t used heat and not encountered any problems.

Mike

Same as Mike

Thanks guys, that's exactly what I needed to know.

All sorted - well, close enough. I should have taken a "before" photo, but the third tine from the camera was about 70mm out. Not having a scaffold pole, I first tried two branches of a tree, (suitably protected), and then the tube of a garden lawn aerator to bend the tine !

Thanks again for the help.

I've used a calibrated 2lb lump hammer over a brick as an anvil.

If you lean on the handle after already miss-treating it due to bending the tines in the first place you may need to find a new handle as well.

If you can't shift sometime without bending tines get a pickaxe.

You're working much too hard on a time-waster; Mother Nature always wins in the end. Throw the fork away and move permanently into your workshop. It's a safe space where only good things happen.

Dave

Dave and Dave, +1

Yes, I know, but in our heavy, compacted clay soil, it can be difficult to realise that one tine is stuck under a stone or a brick and apply a bit too much force !

I was mindful and gentle with the wooden handle when bending the tine back - successfully, luckily.

SoD, agreed, but the garden does need attention from time to time to make it look nice ! The heavy clay soil where we recently moved to is a real bugger, and many plants cannot get their roots into it. So I need to dig it all over and dig in manure etc.

I've also tested the soil, and it's very alkaline, which is a surprise.

Take 12" or so of 1/2" or 3/4" water pipe ( old ) and drive it fully into an undug part of the garden ! You now only have to put the bent tine into the tube to the required depth and swing on the handle to straighten it ! Noel.

You're working much too hard on a time-waster; Mother Nature always wins in the end. Throw the fork away and move permanently into your workshop. It's a safe space where only good things happen.

Dave

Very true, .........though not sure about safe and only good things happen? lol

This last 15 years working a large garden things have got progessively harder, rain no rain, excessive heat, loads of pigeons, butterflies, slugs, flys of all colours, old muscles ...etc etc. I have given up and taken Dave's advice , going to get myself a "train set" as well.

Gardening was never like this, 50 years ago with 1/2 and acre and a Fergy 20, a 410 and spray made it easier, but were accepted then!

Pete

Gardening is for control freaks, leave it alone, something will grow. 😜

Fortunately I have an agreement with senior management, I mow the grass and do the heavy lifting, she does the rest. If it was left to me it would be grass and borrow a sheep from a local farmer now and again.

Get a goose. Yoou can knock it off at christmas.

Roy

Edited By roy entwistle on 31/08/2023 12:45:43

That's the trouble it won't stop growing. Postie does a splendid job of getting up the path past the fuchsia when its prop falls down but hundreds of other bushes keep blocking access to the shed. At least the rabbits keep the grass in check.

The wisdom of the ancients lives on.

Are you sure you didn't read Horace at school, Dave?

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret

"You may drive nature out with a fork, but she will keep coming back".

Horace, Epistles, I, 10, 24.

It always makes me chuckle when somebody bends something straight.