This is a fictitious tool, like the things in the Dr. Seuss stories you read to your kids when they were young.  This tool’s desired function is to increase the square footage that a given piece of sod covers.  Most often it’s desired by landscape contractors who realize toward the end of a project that they don’t have enough sod.

It’s at the point of that realization that the contractor will send his or her most junior employee to the truck to find the sod stretcher.  After a few minutes, when the employee returns with no tool in hand and a frustrated look on his face, the contractor will feign anger, demanding the employee go back to the truck and not come back without the sod stretcher.

When the employee finally returns, again without the tool, or sometimes, returning with a jack, because it’s the only tool left in the truck, laughter usually ensues.

Thanks to Seussville for the image.

There are some bushes out there that we’d all probably like to hammer.  Barberries would be close to the top of my list, with thorns that leave a sting behind when they penetrate the skin.

But that’s not what this hammer’s for.  This one is for softening surfaces or edges of stone or block.  It looks a lot like a meat tenderizer, and it’s function is similar. The head of the hammer is heavy, allowing it to pack a punch when it strikes stone or concrete block, and the teeth on the head of the hammer, when they repeatedly strike a sharp edge, roughen that edge, giving it a more natural look.

It’s often used on materials that have been saw-cut, to return them to a more natural appearance, rather than a man-made, manipulated one.  Using this same hammer on those same rough material edges also serves to make the material a bit safer or less injurious should someone fall onto the material’s edge.

On flat stone surfaces, this hammer is used to make that surface less smooth, which can be important if the stone is being used as a step.  The rougher texture gives pedestrians more traction as they go up and down a set of stone steps, making it less likely that they slip and fall when the stone is wet or temperatures are at or near freezing.

This is typically a tool reserved for pros because it’s so specialized; a homeowner would likely only ever use a hammer like this once or twice during a landscape renovation project.  Unless you cook a lot of steaks using extra tough meat.  Then maybe you’d have more uses for it.

Screeding is the process pulling/scraping a screed board along a pair of parallel screed rails, the purpose being to level out the material between the two screed rails, be it crushed stone or a coarse bedding sand.

The trick to screeding is to keep the screed board tight to the screed rails without putting too much pressure on the rails.  That can bend them or push them deeper into the base material, making your base preparation come out uneven.

Throughout the industry the more common name for this tool in the hardscapers tool chest is screed rail, but screed pipe is also very common.

The function of a screed rail is to serve as a fixed (but temporary) guide when leveling crushed aggregate stone and/or bedding sand in the preparation of the base for a retaining wall or brick paver patio.

The screed rails pictured at right are simply ten foot lengths of 1″ EMT conduit, available at any big box home store.  If you choose to use the same material for your screed rails, inspect each one to make sure it’s not curved or bent, as this will negatively impact your base preparation, which will in turn have negative consequences on the finished paver surface or retaining wall.

In the case of this 1″ EMT conduit, parallel lengths of pipe are packed into the crushed stone base at the necessary elevation, then small piles of crushed stone are placed between the pipe, where a screed board is used to spread those small piles into the low spaces between those pipe by pulling/scraping perpendicular to the screed rails, from one end to the other.

Many other materials are commonly used as screed rails, including 1×4’s and 2×4’s, different types of pipe, and even materials as large as railroad timbers.  The only real caveat in selecting a material to use as a screed guide is that you select one that is straight to begin with, but that also won’t bend or bow under the pressure of screeding and won’t deform if it gets wet (such as narrow lumber).

This, my friends, is your money shovel.  This is the one that gets the work done.  The one that rips up the heavy soils.  Pries on the tree roots.  Works as a lever on those boulders that are too big to lift.

Also called a round point shovel, the spoon shovel more than any other shovel should be the one you’re willing to spend a little extra money for.

As the name suggests and the picture at right confirms, the head of the shovel is rounded, like the shape of a spoon.  It’s the rounded point that allows the shovel the more easily penetrate soils, allowing for a deeper dig per shovel and greater material removal.

We like to occasionally put the digging edge of the shovel to a grinding wheel to keep the edge sharp.  They seem to dig better that way.

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If you have no idea what the general term “shovel” means, I think you’re probably going to find yourself getting into all kinds of trouble working in your yard and should probably step away from the hand tools, pick up the phone and call a professional. But we’re assuming you know which end of a shovel goes in the ground, you’re just wondering about the design and uses of this particular type of shovel.

But there are lots of different types of shovels, each with its ideal uses, and on this page we’ll tell you about the flat shovel. This type of shovel is also sometimes called a square point shovel or a square head shovel.

This type of shovel is most commonly used and should be most commonly used to scrape things from hard surfaces. Shoveling a load of dirt from your driveway into a wheelbarrow, for example. Or that ton of decorative landscape stone you had delivered and dumped in the street to dress up your planting beds.

We often use it to shave the last bits of soil from the bottom of an excavation for a retaining wall or brick paver patio.

And some of the shorter, D-handled models are good for poop scooping and the like.

But this type of shovel should not be used for aggressive digging into native soils. I mean, look at it. It’s got a square head with inward-rounded sides. Nothing could be designed worse for ripping out big chunks of earth than a flat-headed shovel.

So stick to the hard surfaces or light material removal when it comes to your flat shovel and it’ll last as long as this one has.

One really valuable tool in the arsenal of any hardscaper is a laser. There are a few different varieties available, and if you’re someone that’s “in the business,” you’ll want to make sure you have one that’s tough, reliable and accurate over long distances. But those can cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

But you’re not a pro. You’re a do-it-yourselfer looking to get the most bang for your buck and you probably don’t have loads of money to throw at a bunch of expensive tools.

Fear not, my intrepid weekend warrior. Even among us tool hogs we like finding deals on tools that are also very functional. In this case, it’s a palm laser. The one pictured at the right was about $50 at the local big box store and it can do a lot of things the expensive lasers can do, and even do a few extra things the big boys can’t.

What Can a Palm Laser Do?

The one you see pictured is considered “self leveling.” That means if you place it on a tripod or even just on a flat surface, the laser-emitting device inside will naturally adjust itself to emit level laser lines that you can use to check elevations at multiple locations.

They can emit tight beams of light in multiple, perpendicular directions. For a hardscaper this is really useful when laying out the path of retaining walls, patios and walkways, because it allows us to make sure the bond lines of the pavers or the wall construction will be perfectly perpendicular to a house foundation or other structure.

It can also send a beam of light straight up, which can be useful indoors, like when you’re cutting can light holes into the ceiling drywall and want to make sure you don’t miss the can.

These lasers do have their limitations, however. They aren’t known to be extremely accurate over great distances - once you’re past 30 feet or so, the laser may be 1/2″ off in any given direction. Also, the beam of light isn’t particularly intense, which means that outdoor work on a sunny day can be a little frustrating, when you can’t find that little spot of red light that’s fading as you move further away.

But for $50? It’s a great tool.

There are few terms in the world of hardscaping that sound similar but have very different meanings.  But “screed” and “screen” are two that are often confused.

In hardscaping, screeding is the process of striking a board along two screed rails (also called “screed guides”) to evenly distribute crushed aggregate stone between those rails.

The screed board itself can be a piece of 2×4 lumber or square tube aluminum or magnesium alloy.  The alloy boards are far more expensive and typically only the pros go to the expense of having these in their toolboxes, as they never warp and will last a lifetime.  But even the professional hardscaper will use dimensional lumber for screed boards, for those times when the areas to be screeded has obstacles, or requires a notch be cut in a board, or the area is of a size that an alloy board just won’t fit.

So for you, the weekend warrior, it’s off to the local lumber yard or big box store for your screed boards.  It’s a safe assumption that you won’t be working during a downpour, so buying treated lumber won’t be very helpful.  Not to mention it roughly doubles the weight of the board, so unless you’re trying to build a new patio and 20″ biceps at the same time, just stick to the interior stud grade lumber.

Make sure the boards are nice and straight with no twists, and don’t buy any that are longer than 8′ in length.  Anything longer than that and the board will bow as you pull on it, either putting an unwanted crown or swail in your patio base prep.

While every hammer ever made has at least two things in common (long handle to generate head speed, and a flat, solid head to impact a target), there are differences among the the various types of hammers that make them particularly useful for a given task.

In this case, the form of the hammer is designed to best modify and adjust stone (and brick and block).  The head of the hammer is a simple, blunt instrument, usually in the shape of a square.  But the business end of this hammer isn’t the head.  It’s the tail.  In place of a claw or other nail-removing tool, the end resembles something more like a pick or mattock, and it’s function is to chip away at hard materials like stone and cast concrete block.

When using a stone hammer it’s important to wear eye protection because the natural direction of a hammer blow on stone or brick seems to send little bits flying right at the hammer user’s face.

And the hammer will perform better, removing more material per swing, if it’s kept sharp.  We like to put ours under a grinding wheel once or twice a season.

This one’s known by lots of different names, including a Jumping Jack, Rammer-Tamper, or just Rammer.  It’s function is straightforward - jump up and down with as much force as possible, as often as possible, to compact the materials beneath it.

A rammer is different than a vibratory plate in that instead of violently shaking materials to get them to settle and compact, a rammer simply applies brute force to the material beneath it, like a fist pounding into the dirt or a person jumping up and down.

But make no mistake - unless you weigh 3,000 pounds and are still able to jump, you won’t be able to manually generate the same compaction force as a rammer.  Stick to the power tools - they’ll always do a better job for you.

The reason you’d want to use a rammer over a plate vibrator has to do with the material you’ll be compacting.  Crushed aggregate stone compacts to a higher density and greater uniformity under a plate vibrator, while a material like clay, where each particle is flat and wide like a platelet,  a vibratory compactor will do little to settle out this material because it won’t naturally settle out with vibration.  What’s needed are repeated, compacting blows to the material, like a fist pounding on dough.  This will remove air pockets, water pockets and help align those soil particles.

For poorly compacting soils, the use of a rammer is the preferred way to achieve maximum material density.