Bully Tools 14-Gauge Round Point Shovel, Made in USA.

Bought this shovel because of positive review on Wirecutter and happy I did. It's been great. Good steel that has stood up well in challenging conditions.

Absolutely AMAZING shovel!!! I bought our house knowing it needed to be re-landscaped. A complete scrape-off of 30+ years of previous landscaping efforts. In addition to digging through 3 feet of rocks (in a clay-base soil), there were around 2 dozen stumps (lilacs, old cut-down trees, etc) and approx. 3 dozen railroad ties to be dug out. I hired a contractor to do the initial scrape off, but it was (and still is) an immense undertaking. I bought a couple shovels (H-Freight and H Depot), but they would flex severely when I put them to work. They're fine for my wife and kids, but not an adult male. I can easily flex the fiberglass handles and the shovel blades.... No bueno. Then I read about the Bully shovel. It is a thicker steel, no seams in the handle "receiver" (where the handle goes into the shovel head) and something unique - a welded "brace" on the back side of where the handle goes into the shovel head. I can flex the very strong handle (solid wood wrapped in thick fiberglass), but the shovel head barely moves. If I put my weight into it, yeah, the shovel head flexes, but unless it's made out of something like 1/4" steel I can bend it. Incidentally, there are other brands of shovels similar to the specifications of the Bully shovel, but at 2x (or more) the price for nothing extra. ETA: I read reviews of the shovel before I bought it and a common critique was that the powder coating/paint came off the shovel. This critique should be completely disregarded!!! (no, I do not work for or sell Bully Tools equipment) If you're digging into soil and rocks the paint is going to come off - a shovel is a tool not a museum piece. If you *use* your shovel don't worry about paint coming off or a little surface rust. I usually rinse my shovel off after using and have never had a problem...

Probably the most robust shovel I've ever owned. It will last a very long time.

Have only used it briefly, but if seems extremely solid. Dug up an old plant with a tough root system that had already bent a spading fork. Looks like it will last forever.

I like this shovel. Just pick it up and look at it and you can tell it is a quality tool. Very sturdy and lots of well-designed details. I've spent about 3 hours digging out stumps with it so far. It is so much easier to get real work done with this shovel than any of the others I have available. I broke my 30+ year old Sears Best Craftsmen and they replaced it the best one that had, but it is a real clunker; bought this one to replace the 'replacement' and am I real happy I did. I light the weight of the shovel -- not too heavy, but still enough heft to power through a root. The handle flexes a little more than I'm used to (using all-wood handles), but when it starts to bend that is probably a good indicator that maybe I'm using a little too much force and should ease up a bit on the prying. I wish it was sharper right out of the box, but that can be fixed easily enough with a flat file and 10 minutes of spare time.

Only problem handle was difficult to attach to shovel. Attach with screw but hole doesn’t line up so had a hard time getting to attach the two pieces.

In theory, putting a shovel together is straightforward: you jam the shovel part on the handle part, line up the two holes, and put the bolt through the holes. In theory. This Bully Round Point Shovel, however, took me more than an hour to put together. More than an hour! You see, the holes in the shovel did not line up, so that the screw and the bolt did not meet up when I put them through. Next, I tried to shim them into place with a screwdriver. Nope. Finally I drilled holes to match the holes in the shovel. And these holes were fundamentally not opposite each other. So then I had to struggle to get the screw to fit into the bolt. This screw is so short, you can't wiggle it around to get it into the bolt. And the bolt wouldn't accept the screw at even the slightest angle. Not to mention you have to hold the bolt AND the screw on both ends simultaneously with Phillips head screwdrivers! Several power tools later I managed to strip both the bolt and the screw but eventually got the darn thing together. As to how good a shovel it is, I have no idea. We'll see if it even holds together. But take my advice, not Wirecutter's: don't buy a shovel you have to assemble, and certainly not this one.

This shovel is off good quality but too heavy. You're lifting what feels like five pounds before you put anything on the shovel. I was going to return it but they wanted almost $20 for shipping to return it. That's over 35% of the original cost to just return something I really can't use. I thought using Amazon for returns would save that for me. Should have bought from a store when I can get free returns.

Good.

Best shovel I've ever used.

Excellent quality!

This shovel came without the top handle cover peice..so the end is hollow. We taped it up but..come on.