On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:31:27 -0600, James Waldby wrote:

My ~25-year-old snow scoop is similar to the Silver Bear scoop -- ie,
sheet metal with EMT handle, as at http://pat7.com/jp/snow/img_6934c.jpg
and http://pat7.com/jp/snow/img_6935c.jpg -- with a few differences, like
rounded corners at the top of the handle, a bend in the handle a few
inches behind the bin, etc. Overall size of bin is 22" wide (ie same
as S.B. scoop), 28" long, with sides tapering from 7" to 9" in height.
I don't see a need for wheels (an S.B. option), but a front wear plate
or stiffener would be good.
I tend to avoid wear plates to the point that if there is one, I don't
buy. I just went out and bought a new shovel on Friday - plastic scoop
16" wide, 18" long, with a plastic "D" on the other end of four feet
of 1 1/4" hardwood dowel stock. This was to augment two "Melnor"
shovels a couple inches wider that I bought nearly twenty years ago
and have had the handles re-seated a couple times as well as the
blades being worn back to the reinforcing ridges. I still use the old
ones for pushing light snow into a windrow for the blower, and leave
them in visible locations for emergency use by passers-by. For serious
pushing of semi loose ice or hard packed snow, I have an old steel
bladed pusher worn down to a wavy edge that overcomes many years of
distortion that was left in a house I bought in 1975.
Getting back to wear strips, any that I have seen more than a couple
years old were totally distorted, or half detached and broken off.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada