Dan Musicant ) wrote in
:

I have 3 hoes. I'm not particularly tall (5' 10.5"), but it seems that
they make hoes for people 5' 8" or less, because two of mine make my
back ache, having to bend over so much. I scarfed an extension on one a
few years ago and attempted a scarf on another hoe recently. The glue
was 1 hour epoxy I've had around for many years to which I'd added some
steel filings from my grinder. The reasoning was that the filings would
make the bond tougher.

No,it's just a filler.It actually weakens the bond.
If you want to epoxy wood,you need a THIN epoxy like a boat-building epoxy
such as West Systems,RAKA,or System Three.The epoxy has to soak into the
wood.you use thin epoxy on the wood surfaces,then use wood flour or fumed
silica as a thickener,to fill gaps in the joint. You can't clamp too hard
or it squeezes out too much epoxy and starves the joint.
Now,if you could glue a metal tube over the scarf joint,epoxy would be
good.

IMO,good wood glues are better than epoxy for this application.
Use a waterproof wood glue.

Well, the glue failed while using the hoe, so I
ground off the glue and tried another glue I had on hand, J-B Weld. I've
had the tubes for probably around 3 years. The packaging claims it's the
"Worlds finest cold weld" etc. Well, I'm using the hoe a couple of weeks
after this and the scarf breaks again!!

epoxies take a few weeks to gain full strength.


I never had trouble with the scarf on the other hoe. The angle is about
the same, around 30 degrees (guesstimating), the length of the scarf
being close to 3x the diameter of the handle.

Better glue?

and a longer scarf, about 4" long.
Dan




www.systemthree.com;

you can download their Epoxy Book,VERY informative about using epoxies and
fillers.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net