Many gardeners have seen or even managed to use the Tornado hand cultivator. This is a rather unusual garden device for loosening the soil and fighting weeds with a deep root system. The device is useful, but not so necessary that it is worth buying for the price they demand for it. An alternative would be to make such a cultivator yourself.
Materials:
- car suspension spring;
- 3/4 inch steel pipe.
Manufacturing process of a hand cultivator
The design of the cultivator resembles a hand drill, which uses 4 curled rods instead of a knife. They are directed in such a way that when rotating the device crashes into the ground. The easiest and most reliable way to make these rods is from the suspension spring of a passenger car. You can find 2 broken springs at a scrap metal site or buy 1 intact one at a car dismantling site, then the homemade product will be extremely cheap. 4 turns of equal length are cut from the central part of the spring. The edges of the spring have a different diameter, so blanks are not made from them.
Next, you need to take a small piece of pipe and weld spring blanks to it.
To do this, you must first assemble a jig for positioning the parts. It consists of a plywood disk with a pin in the center. A nut is screwed onto the stud, and a piece of tube is put on top. After this, the coils of the spring are attached to it, aligned and welded.
The tips of the rods need to be sharpened on one side from the bottom. After this, using the remaining scraps from the spring, 4 short sections are cut out to extend the rods so that they converge closer to the center.
These blanks are sharpened on one side in a similar way, which allows them to fit smoothly with long turns. On the other edge they are sharpened into a cone. The parts are welded and the seams are sanded. Extension allows you to set the coils in the correct direction, which is impossible to do if you try to get by with only one long section of the spring coil.
Then a rod is welded to a section of the cultivator tube. Its length is adjusted to the user's height. It is optimal for the device to be slightly higher than the lower back. Then a knob from the same pipe is welded to the rod.
The resulting cultivator is very simple, and due to the use of a spring it will never bend or break. They can be used to cultivate an area, remove deep roots, and also loosen virgin soil at seed planting points.
