Comparing old school hand tools vs modern battery powered ones for fence building

Last summer I built a 300 foot fence around my property in Ohio and used my granddad's old post hole diggers for half of it and rented a power auger for the other half. Hand digging those holes in clay soil took forever and left my arms feeling like jelly after just 10 holes. The power auger chewed through everything in like 2 minutes per hole no sweat. But the funny thing is the hand dug holes actually held the posts way better. The power auger left the walls smooth and the posts would shift around in heavy rain. Hand digging left rough walls and the dirt packed back in tighter. So now I'm stuck wondering if fast and easy is worth it when the old way gives you a better result. Anybody else find that newer tools sometimes make things worse for the actual job?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_seth2d ago

man i feel this so hard. i did basically the same thing last year on my own fence and the power auger left those stupid slick walls and my first good storm had a couple posts leaning. had to go back and pack in gravel and dirt by hand anyway. that rough wall from the hand diggers grips the ground way better no question. but man my arms were wrecked for like a week after doing it the old way. it's like you can't win, either you save your body now and deal with shifting later or you suffer now and it holds forever.

grayperez2d ago

gotta admit though, @the_seth, the one thing nobody talks about is the soil type you're dealing with. i dug my first fence in straight up clay and the hand auger was a nightmare but it actually packed solid after a rain. then i helped a buddy with sandy loam and the hand dug holes just collapsed on themselves before we could get the post in. we ended up having to mix in some cement just to keep the shape. different dirt changes the whole calculus on whether the rough walls even matter.

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