Spade Sharpening

Update from Alan
The difficulty that left-handed gardeners have when it comes to sharpening a spade had never occurred to me. In the write up http://www.teachinggarden.org/sharpening.html I glibly glossed over the problem with the admonition “Sinisters make the usual adjustments.” It turns out that a right handed single cut file cannot be used left handed, the teeth are going the wrong way and will not cut. A left handed file - so far as I can discern - is not manufactured. What I demonstrated in the class was not left handed filing, it was just awkward right handed filing.

There may be a way around this using the tool as a draw file but, because I’m a bit ambidextrous, I’m not sure if I’m filing left handed or just back handed.  Between now and the next class I’ll try to sit down with a left hander and see if there is any way to do the job other than learning to file right handed.  Either way, I’m going to have to rewrite part of the document which has been on-line these past five years.