Which rake will last longer in the country: an overview of tools from different materials

Loosen the soil, lev­el the beds, col­lect mowed grass in the sum­mer or fall­en leaves in the fall — for all this, a gar­den rake is need­ed in the coun­try.

There are dozens of mod­els on the mar­ket for each type of work, but buy­ing them all is a waste of mon­ey. It is bet­ter to take a uni­ver­sal tool — a T‑shaped rake with twist­ed or straight teeth.

Any buy­er is sure to ask the ques­tion: “And what mate­r­i­al to choose a rake from?” It can be plas­tic, iron, stain­less steel or alu­minum. “The most use­ful pro­gram” test­ed all kinds.

Testing a rake — which one is better to buy

The cheap­est uni­ver­sal rake is made of plas­tic. But they, accord­ing to Alexan­der Polyakov, a gar­den­ing tool spe­cial­ist, can only rake mowed grass into a pile. For oth­er jobs, they are not suit­able.

“The teeth them­selves are so flim­sy that they can be torn off with just one move­ment of the hand. If you do com­plex mechan­i­cal work, then it is clear that you will not col­lect much by such rob­beries.he explained.

For tests in the coun­try, rakes were tak­en from more durable mate­ri­als:

• Rake made of polypropy­lene for 180 rubles.
• Struc­tur­al steel rake for 230 rubles.
• Rake made of stain­less steel for 350 rubles.
• Met­al rake for 600 rubles.
• Rake made of rein­forced polypropy­lene for 650 rubles.
• Rake made of stain­less steel for 990 rubles.

How to fix a handle for a rake

Most often, cut­tings are sold sep­a­rate­ly. So, before start­ing work, the rake must be col­lect­ed.

“It is desir­able that he come here [отверстие для черенка] came in tight. Not just to put your hand on, but to knock so that he him­self enters and with­out any hes­i­ta­tion sits in his place. We drove 2–3 cen­time­ters inside. This gives the like­li­hood that it will no longer hang out. It remains to fix with a self-tap­ping screw “Polyakov explained.

If the rake is made of frag­ile mate­r­i­al, it may crack dur­ing instal­la­tion. To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing, the expert advis­es using a met­al clamp.

“A clamp is tak­en. ahead of time is tight­ened almost to the end. And only then I plant the stalk. This saves me the risk of crack­ing the seat“he showed.

Every gar­den­er knows: before plant­i­ng plants in the beds and imme­di­ate­ly after har­vest­ing, the soil must be prop­er­ly loos­ened. Let’s see which rake will do the job bet­ter.

When stuff­ing the iron rake on the han­dle, they bent. To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing, you still need to try to bend the tool in the store. Is the mate­r­i­al easy to form? Then it is bet­ter to refuse this pur­chase.

Both sam­ples — made of met­al and polypropy­lene — helped to get rid of large clods of earth. But while work­ing, the first mod­el had crooked teeth, and the sec­ond ones cracked.

Sam­ple from stain­less steel. This rake did the job, but the teeth of the tool also changed a lot. I had to straight­en them by hand.

The rake made of an unknown met­al showed itself best of all (the man­u­fac­tur­er sim­ply did not indi­cate the alloy), as well as rein­forced stain­less steel and expen­sive polypropy­lene. They not only loos­ened the soil qual­i­ta­tive­ly, but also remained intact, as if they had just come from the store.

Which rake is faster to collect mowed grass and fallen leaves

Worst of all, a rake made of struc­tur­al steel coped with the task. The flat and often set teeth were con­stant­ly clogged with grass. The same will hap­pen with Lithua­nia. You will have to con­stant­ly stop and clean the tool man­u­al­ly.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the most expen­sive sam­ple showed itself just as poor­ly — a rake made of rein­forced stain­less steel.

“Well, they don’t col­lect small things, they just pass small grass between the teeth due to bend­ing”- the sum­mer res­i­dent is dis­ap­point­ed.

A rake made of cheap stain­less steel and an unknown met­al proved to be a lit­tle bet­ter. But the lead­ers of this test were sam­ples from polypropy­lene. More­over, a tool made of cheap mate­r­i­al was in no way infe­ri­or to an expen­sive coun­ter­part.

“They showed them­selves very well, and, prob­a­bly, I would still put them in sec­ond place right after the expen­sive one”the expert is pleased.

How to choose a durable rake — how long the teeth can withstand

But there is anoth­er fac­tor that often influ­ences the choice of tool — weight. Sell­ers in shops and mar­kets assure: the heav­ier the rake, the stronger it is. Is it so?

First, let’s weigh the sam­ples. As expect­ed, propy­lene rakes turned out to be the light­est. The heav­i­est ones are made of rein­forced stain­less steel. Now we have fixed all the rakes on a spe­cial stand and we will sup­port weights and pan­cakes from dumb­bells on the teeth.

The first, odd­ly enough, gave up a rake made of struc­tur­al steel. They were already deformed at a weight of 28 kilo­grams. The cheap­est tool made of polypropy­lene with­stood a load of 37 kilo­grams.

“This rake takes noth­ing. And again the teeth in their orig­i­nal posi­tion. This sug­gests that the plas­tic is very durable and the rake will not suf­fer as a result of long-term use and heavy phys­i­cal exer­tion.the spe­cial­ist con­clud­ed.

An accept­able result was also shown by a cheap stain­less steel rake — with­stood 33 kilo­grams. Met­al — 42. But a rake made of rein­forced propy­lene sur­prised even an expert — 70 kilos and did not even bend.

The most expen­sive sam­ple also with­stood 70 kilo­grams — a rake made of rein­forced stain­less steel. But, as we remem­ber, they weigh almost three times more than usu­al. And if you work with such a heavy tool for a long time, your hands and back may hurt.

Accord­ing to the results of all tests, rakes made of rein­forced polypropy­lene proved to be the best. They are light and easy to use and at the same time did not break under heavy load. Yes, and they are not as expen­sive as a rake made of rein­forced stain­less steel.