On Thu, 4 Aug 2016 07:33:42 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote in message
.4.170...
Martin Eastburn fired this volley in
:

My best pry bar is a 6' green spade with a large flat end.
Deflection
is nominal when my weight is on the end.


My fave is a "St. Angelo"-style spade-end bar. 6' hex steel with
one 2-
1/2" spade and, and the other drawn to a point.

I've never bent it, in decades of stump-pulling and
foundation-raising.
Heck, I've cut rock and bricks with it, with no sense that I'd ever
damage
anything but the cutting edge, easily-dressed.

Lloyd

San Angelo bars are great for prying the rocks out of New England
glacial soil but I just found that a Digging bar with a wider,
thinner, sharper chisel end is better for chopping stump roots. The

That's one style I haven't tried for roots. The narrower, offset tip
should work better than the wide, centered tip, I'd imagine.


mushroom on the other end tamps the fill in post holes.

What fill? Don't you mound the crete so it sheds water?


That means I need the San Angelo bar to dig a post hole and the
Digging bar to fill it, since I have both rocks and stumps to remove.

This is nearly useless for serious stump removal.
http://www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...dle-95005.html
It might be useful to cut brush roots in less stony soil and it isn't
as tiring to use as the solid steel bars. It seemed like it would
remove the bark from a log if I sharpened it; I had only a pine stump
to try that on. Several reviewers liked it for stripping off old floor
tile.

At 5.4#, it would hardly touch live roots and would glance off dead
ones. I bought their larger one (no longer sold) when my lovely
torsion bar didn't make the trip up here to Oregon. I'd forgotten.

--
It is easier to fool people than it is to
convince people that they have been fooled.
--Mark Twain