I was soaking my brick trowel overnight and it was wrecking the shank

Took a closer look about 6 months ago when the handle on my Marshalltown started wobbling and I realized sitting in a bucket of water every night was rusting the tang from the inside out. Now I just wipe it down with an oily rag and knock the mortar off with a scrap of burlap before I leave the site in Albany. Anyone else been taught to soak them or was that just the old timer I worked under?

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tara70021h ago

The guys who taught me in the 90s swore by the water bucket too, but they were using old trowels with wood handles that swelled up and locked onto the shank, so soaking kind of made sense back then. Problem is modern handles are rubber or plastic over a steel tang, and water gets in at the ferrule and just sits there. I pulled the handle off my W. Rose last winter and the tang was pitted halfway down, which told me everything. A dry rag and a drop of oil is all it ever needed.

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