Gardens illustraded copper tools

MAKER

ABOVE: LYRA CLAWS HANG SIDE BY SIDE; EACH OF THESE 33CM-LONG TOOLS HAVE FIVE PRONGS FITTED TO A TURNED BEECH HANDLE.OPPOSITE: THE COMPONENTS OF A POLUX HOE, THE PERFECT TOOL FOR PRECISION WORK IN A DENSELY PLANTED GARDEN.

86 Copper tools 1/8/03 12:11 pm Page 72

IN A FORMER HUNTING LODGE IN AUSTRIA, GARDEN TOOLS ARE HAND

FORGED FROM COPPER, IN THE BELIEF THAT THIS NOBLE METAL IS KINDEST

TO THE SOIL. WORDS BY SANDRA DEEBLE. PHOTOGRAPHS BY GAVIN KINGCOME

Copperbottomed


ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: FRANZ HOFLER USES THE WELDING TORCH. THE CASTOR TROWEL, WITH ITS POINTED DESIGN AND

BEECH-WOOD HANDLE, IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR PKS TOOLS. BLADES FOR THE LIBRA SHOVEL. HYDRA HOES AND PEGASUS PICKS.


At PKS Copper Tools, nobody hasany truck with calling a spade aspade. Instead, the Orion was

born. A rake is Perseus; a hoe, Sir ius;and a p ick answer s to the name ofPegasus. The range of hand-forgedcopper garden tools produced by PKShas recently reached the dozen mark,with a shovel – Libra – being the latesttoo l . The company i s enter ing i t ss even th ye a r o f s a l e s , and Jö rgSchauberger, administrator of the PKSassociation, says that while the companyis keen to grow, the production processwill never change. “Six years ago wesold 400 tools in one year. This year itwill be more like 3,000. We could goup to 6,000 tools, but we will alwaysforge the tools by hand.”

The story of PKS Copper Tools starts70 years ago, when a pioneering ecolo-g i s t and fo re s t e r c a l l ed V ik to rSchauberger was asked by the King ofBulgaria to investigate the decline in soilproductivity in northern Austria. Viktorhad a suspicion that copper rather thaniron tools were kindest to the soi l ,although he had to wait until after theSecond World War to prove it.

Finally, in the late 1940s, agriculturaltrials were carried out: the same field ofcorn was ploughed in alternate str ipsusing two tools made of different mate-rials. One plough was made of iron; theother, ‘The Golden Plough’, was copperplated. The results confirmed Viktor’ssuspicions: the strips ploughed with thecopper-plated tool produced a yield ofcorn eight times higher and 40 per centgreater in weight than those ploughedwith iron. Viktor attr ibuted this to the iron oxidising into rust, which in tur n caused the soi l to dr y out .Following the agricultural trials, Viktorpatented his own copper-plated plough,but as copper was in short supply at

the time, his project was put on hold.Viktor Schauberger was one of the

world’s first natural scientists, and withhis son Walter he founded the Austrianecological movement. Established in1949, ‘The Green Front’ aimed ‘to makethe earth fertile again’. Continuing hisf ather’s legacy, in the 1970s WalterSchauberger established the PythagorasKepler School (PKS) in an imposinghunt ing lodge in Bad I schl , in theSalzkammergut region of Upper Austria.There, Wal ter became involved inteaching and researching his father’sdiscoveries, most of which were basedon acute observations of nature.

Five years after Walter’s death in1994, his son Jörg gave up his career as aradio journalist to promote the work ofPKS – particularly the copper gardentools that Viktor first patented in 1950.Jörg’s first task was to find a coppersmithin tune wi th the f ami ly ’s man t r a :‘Comprehend, copy and co-operatewith nature.’ When he discovered FranzHöfler at a PKS seminar, Jörg knew hehad found a soulmate. “Every singlepiece Franz makes is a work of art,” saysJörg. “He’s an artist, and he understandswhat my grandfather was trying to do.”

“Copper i s a noble meta l ,” saysFranz. “When I’m making these gardentools, I know that someone is going toreally enjoy working with them. They’resharp and easy to use, and they do thesoil a lot of good.” “They are also beau-tiful,” Jörg adds, saying that a lot of PKScustomers buy the tools with no inten-tion of using them. “They hang them inthe house as copper artwork.”

In his workshop, Franz gets ready tomake a shovel. He places a shield-shapediron template on a sheet of copper andtraces round it, lightly scratching thesurface, before cutting it out with platescissor s. Using a welding torch, he


For more information about copper callthe Copper Development Association on01442 275700. To purchase PKS’copper tools in the UK, call Implement-at ions on 0845 330 3148 or vis i twww.implementations.co.uk. In the US,contact EarthHeal on 800 771 9957.

GARDENS ILLUSTRATED readers canbuy a Castor trowel and Lyra claw for£45 (saving £2) including free p&p, byposting a cheque (payable to Implement-ations) to PO Box 2568, NuneatonCV10 9YR. Include a delivery addressand telephone number, and quote GI.

applies heat to the spade, just enough tomake it malleable, before gently curlingthe edges to create a lip. As the heat licksthe copper, distorted colours emerge,like oil in a puddle. This riot of coloureventually settles down to a pinky bluebefore fading to a mother of pearl.

At this point, Franz obviously meansbu s ine s s , becau se he pu t s on h i searphones just as we’re subjected to anexcrucia t ing leve l o f noi se f rom amechanical sledgehammer – a brute of a machine. Franz sits astr ide it, like apotter on a wheel, wear ing gloves, a leather apron and sitt ing on a furblanket as he hammer s the shovel ,holding it with both hands as he movesit around to make sure the copper isworked evenly. As he reaches the edges,they f la t ten out, c lear ly becomingsharper at the same time. “Copper is asoft material,” Franz explains, “and thisprocess, known as cold forging, is whatgives copper the necessary strength toact as a garden tool. It also gives the toola subt le, r ibbed appearance.” Oneadvantage of the copper tools is thatwhen you want to sharpen them, youcan just bash the edge of the blade witha mallet. Would-be competitors to PKShave attempted to copy their gardentools by pouring molten copper into amould, but this results in weakeningrather than strengthening the metal.

The major ity of the handles arecrafted locally from lime wood grown in

Romania. Lime wood is more hard-wearing than pine – traditionally usedfor tools in the UK – but is light andcomfortable to use. For the spade, ash isemployed, the conventional wood for aspade handle. As the wood tur nershaves off long whorls, he could befashioning a r ifle butt or an oar. Theergonomic handles, piled up in thecorner and looking eerily like bones, areleft unpolished and soft to the touch.

Franz Höfler then solders what lookslike a giant copper clothes peg to thespade. A seam of gold bubbles up. Hegrinds this down, flattening the beads; itnow looks like golden putty. The shovel ispolished pink before the PKS marque is stamped on, the organic spiral of the Pythagoras Kepler System. When thewooden handle is finally fitted, one ofFranz’s assistants (nobody else gets a lookin with the sledgehammer) is allowed tohit it hard twice on the ground, some-thing he does with regal pride.

Gardeners who have converted tocopper tools not only rave about the glintof the metal in the sun, but also thetactile lime-wood handles and the feel-good factor you get from using them.And the ultimate benefit is, for somereason, that one sniff of soil dug with acopper tool seems to elicit a unanimousU-turn by slugs and snails. “People oftenbuy the copper tools as a present,” saysJörg. “But when they try them out, theyjust have to buy more for themselves.”


TOP ROW: ERGONOMIC HANDLES. HAND CRAFTING LIME WOOD. A PERSEUS RAKE TAKES SHAPE. MIDDLE ROW: SIRIUS HOE. WELDING. THE PKS

MARQUE ON A POLUX. FRANZ HOFLER AT WORK. BOTTOM ROW: THE PKS HEADQUARTERS AT BAD ISCHL. PERSEUS RAKES. LIBRA SHOVEL.


Technology

Gardens illustraded copper tools