AMES 2672400 Aluminum Scoop with Hardwood Handle and D-Grip, 46-Inch, Gray

I have never reviewed a product before actually using it, but immediately upon opening this scoop shovel I was amazed at the level of negligence in the assembly of this shovel. Especially being an Ames product. I have owned several Ames tools over the years and have never seen such poor quality on any of them. First if you look at the included pictures, the handles is not square with the shovel, which will cause a balance issue when moving material.Second, you can see in the pictures they have attached both the T hand grip and the scoop to the handle using light duty, cheap aluminum rivets. I bought a scoop shovel to move more material than I can with my garden shovel, but this priduywill never hold up to the heavier use. Therefore in my opinion it will never hold up to the use it was intended for.Third if you refer to the pictures, looking down the shaft the T handle has not installed squarely with the scoop. It is twisted counter clockwise several degrees.In summary the handle is crooked and twisted and the fasteners are to weak. Two things I find surprising. It’s made in the USA and al of the 4&5 star reviews.Update: upon first use the shovel is sloppy lose. It makes a lot of creaking noise and the balance is an issue with every being unsquare and twisted. I should send it back; but I will most likely disassemble it and Reassemble it properly. Pretty sad tool as it is

Tried using to transfer 5 yards of topsoil. After a few shovels I quit and went to a smaller, heavier duty steel transfer shovel. Was disappointed that I couldn’t use this to make short work of a big project. This might be good for lighter weight or more coarse material like mulch, bark, leaves or perhaps crushed rock if weight isn’t an issue. Here is why I didn’t like this:1) questionable durability. From the beginning there’s too much flex in the handle. I don’t believe the rivets will last long. It looks like the neck of the wood handle was cut down to fit in the collar of the scoop, making me think the wood will break sooner than later. It creaks loudly when shoveling.2) I’m 6 feet tall, and to scoop anything at ground level I’d be using my back way more than is safe to do. Perhaps scooping out of the back of a raised truck bed, or the top half of a pile is ok. But the handle is just too short.

Works excellently for wood chips - especially if shoveling off an asphalt or concrete surface so the sharp end/corners does not dig into the dirt. The design is such that it does NOT work worth beans on anything with rocks or sticks in it. Would probably work on snow without ice, or coal or dry sand, but would gouge into wood decking or such for snow removal - and has such a large capacity that a full load of anything but powder would be pretty heavy to lift. Definitely a specialty shovel.I guess it is a high-alloy aluminum, because using it on an asphalt surface it wears amazingly slowly like steel. Is QUITE thin though, so I would say not for commercial use except in very free-flowing light weight material like grains, or maybe scooping on a concrete slab. Asphalt wear on mine is enough after about 15 hours use that I am going to have to put a wear strip on the bottom to prevent wear-through.Additional comments after about 1 year's use and a couple of more purchases for other locations: good for fluffy snow (but will gouge into wood decks or pavers and scratch drives). Excellent for grain, wood chips, compost, leaf piles. Works fine on sand and gravel (not stone) and dryish topsoil too - just take a half-shovel bite or you will pull your back muscles lifting because it holds about 4 times what a normal round-nose contractor's shovel does. The wear issue I noted above is not serious - wears at the tip of the flat portion fast initially when working on asphalt or concrete, but once it starts wearing the rounded sides and the formed ridges in the blade the wear slows down to not much faster than with a standard steel shovel. This is a REALLY hard alloy for aluminum - which makes the shovel itself only about 2/3-3/4 the weight of a standard square-nose or round-nose contractor shovel. This model is becoming more and more used around the place as time goes on, as long as the material is loose - DEFINITELY NOT for damp or gravelly soil, and way too light weight to try digging down into the ground or a pile with it. Scooping horizontally under the pile (preferably on a hard flat surface) and lifting or tilting up to load is the way to go - no pushing it down into the pile with your foot.

Some sharp edges on the metal edges at wood interfaces to the point that it slightly scraped my hand when I wasn't wearing gloves.