JCB 400 x 180 /110mm Blade Grafting Spade - Newcastle Style – Drain Master - Professional Solid Forged, Long Handle, Site and Gardening Tools - For Home Improvement

Great for trench digging which is what I needed it for. Well designed but inevitably quite heavy

Knew what I was after. If you're doing a lot of digging, or even a little difficult digging you want one.Great for digging in soil/clay full of hardcore and bricks. Brilliant for digging in clay with the right technique (work backwards, put the blade in, pry backwards, lift out, repeat), big "cores" of clay the full depth of the blade.Definitely sturdy, I smashed through a lot of bricks and put my full weight on it to pry big pieces of steel out of the ground, literally stood on it even bouncing a little (I'm 13.6 stone) and I don't think it even flexed.

Easy to use. Cuts through soil easier than conventional spades. Especially for older people who don't have a lot of strength.

I got this for it’s toughness and precision for digging out a large root. This made exposing all the roots easy and my wife sawed through them and it left the ground with ease. Some have said it is heavy - I’m 60 years old - the weight seems ok if you take into account it’s strength

The spade is quality there is no doubt about that. Sadly for me (and being a mere woman) it hasn’t made light work of digging holes to plant trees in heavy clay compacted soil - great to precariously stand on either sides of the spade to ensure it goes into the ground but pulling it back out was another thing. Doubtful the heavy continuous rain we’ve had has helped as it felt it has sucked the spade into place. I felt I was re-enacting the scene from Excalibur. Aside from that, this spade is worth the money.

Used to pirate giant areas of puddles in garden, works a treat!

I bought this because my stony clay soil is very tricky to dig with wider blade shovels, border spades aren’t designed to cope in such conditions. This is a professional grade shovel and isn’t a lightweight! That’s precisely why I bought it. This is a case of you get what you pay for, it costs more and is worth its weight in gold from my pov. I can dig out holes with this shovel with so much ease in comparison to my wider bladed shovels. I used to have to fork over any ground before it was loose enough to then be dug out. This shovel can do a lot of the digging without the need for pre forking. It cannot cope with highly compacted dry soil but you need to wet it before you put it in. Buy and enjoy!

This really was the only option I could find that was really robust but also had the load spreaders on the blade so you can jump on them without wrecking your boots. A bit heavy but that is the price you pay.