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Garden Hand Tools
Hand Tampers – What are they and how do they work?
Last Updated on March 25, 2024 by Editors
Purchasing a new tool soon for garden landscaping such as paving or compact gravel and dirt? Hold on to your credit card! Check out this essential manually operated tool and learn how to shop the best to suit your needs. During some garden or other outdoor living spaces jobs, a need arises to pack down the soil, dirt, gravel, or other materials. Boots and common garden hand tools like shovels, spades, and hoes don’t cut it. Luckily, there are garden hand tools for this task, like hand tampers.
If you already have a hand tamper and you are going to use it for hand-tamping gravel, soil, etc., then read on to learn how to use your tamping tool properly.
Table of Contents
Which is the best hand tamper
When it comes to finding the best hand tamper, there are a few things you need to take into account. The size and most importantly the weight of the tool are critical. You want something that’s easy to handle and heavy enough to tamp down dirt effectively. The material of the handle is also important, as you want something that’s durable and won’t break easily. Most tamp tools on the market are overpriced, so this is a very short list.
Our top pick: Bully Tools 92540 Thick Steel Plate Hand Tamper
For buyers in search of a solid hand tamper tool, the steel plate tamper 92540 from Bully Tools is an excellent choice. This ground tamper features a 3/8″ thick 9.75-inch x 9.75-inch square steel plate head, a solid steel handle, and helpful a rubber cushioned grip. It is a sturdy manual tamp tool that levels and compacts really well. We like it because of its weight and its price. It is one of the heaviest hand tampers on the market! What’s more, it is made in the USA.
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Budget-friendly option: Walensee Steel Tamper with an 8-Inch X 8-Inch head.
For folks who need something more affordable, we recommend the Walensee Steel Tamper with an 8-Inch X 8-Inch head. The square stainless steel head connects firmly to a three-piece 48″ metal handle (steel). This tamper tool has a strong ergonomic rubber grip and weighs around 10 pounds. In our opinion, its weight makes this hand tool good only for smaller projects. It’s not as heavy as our top pick, but it’s still a great tool for the price.
What is a hand tamper?
A Hand Tamper is a garden hand tool with a square flat head and a long handle, used for, well, tamping: packing down the soil, gravel, and other granular or powdered materials by reducing their size and increasing their density.
Types
If you look on the market you’ll find one type of Hand Tamper tool only. This type features an 8-Inch x 8-Inch to 10-inch x 10-inch square steel head. Square heads are fine because their shape brings slightly better compaction results, but the weight of most of these ground tampers is not ideal. Generally, the heavier the dirt tamper, the faster the soil can be tamped.
For better compaction of spot areas, a heavy Digging Bar with a flat handle perhaps is a better solution.
What are hand tampers used for?
The Hand Tamper tool helps make the surface flat and compact. It is great for leveling gravel, flattening and smoothing dirt ground, for example when laying a brick patio or , or repairing asphalt and tamping loose soil. In addition, you can use hand tamper for pavers. In the garden or other outdoor areas, the hand tamper tool can be used to properly compact the ground for installing pavers for paths or patios, garden fountains, fire pits, garden tool sheds, or other small outdoor structures.
A wooden tamper, a hand tamper with a wooden flat head, is an ideal choice to make the soil firm after sowing or tamp a refilled planting hole and a lot better than tamping with shoes or some other garden hand tool (remember that, in these cases, you only need to firm the soil, not pack it down).
How to use a hand tamper?
Picture this: You want to make a strong and level base on your patio for your outdoor bar height bistro set or your new outdoor dining set with swivel chairs. You want to make sure that the base is flat and level so that your furniture sits evenly. To prepare the dirt for a patio base, use a manual tamper to create a stable and level foundation for your outdoor furniture.
The hand tamper has a slim upright design. Because of that the tamping motion is vertical.
- Prepare the soil, rake it, and spray it with water
- Keep your feet apart
- Grasp the handle in both hands
- Lift and, depending on the weight of the Hand Tamper tool:
- drop, or
- strike the soil surface with force
- (Add another layer of soil)
- Repeat until the desired compaction level is achieved
Always avoid using your back when lifting; use your legs instead.
The lift and drop technique is used for maximum compaction (made by a garden hand tool of course…). On the other hand, the strike mode is more versatile because you can control the level of compaction.
For the lift and drop technique, the Hand Tamper should weigh two pounds for every square inch of its head flat surface. There aren’t many (or any) Hand Tamper models on the market that favor this technique. If this tamping method suits you better then you should consider a custom-built or a DIY hand tamper.
How to use it to tamp sand?
To compress sand in order to create a level surface, first, insert the tool into the sand at the desired location. Next, use your body weight to push down on the hand tamper in order to compress the sand. Finally, remove it from the sand and move to the next location. Repeat this process until the entire surface is level.
Expert advice: Avoid tamping bedding sand when laying pavers.
How to even dirt with hand tamper?
If you’re wondering how to even out dirt with a hand tamper, the process is actually quite simple. First, clear any large rocks or debris from the area you’ll be working on. Then, use the hand tool to evenly distribute the dirt, working in small sections until the entire area is complete. For best results, use a consistent, back-and-forth motion with even pressure to create a level surface.
Hand Tamper vs Plate Compactor Machine
The cheapest Plate Compactor model costs at least ten times more than a great and proven Hand Tramper and needs some kind of power like gas to operate. So, the real question is: Should you buy a good Hand Tramper and keep it forever or rent a Plate Compactor for a few hours?
Plate compactors use vibration. For this reason alone, they are ideal for working with granular soils (sand, silt, or gravel). Whether single plate, reversible plate, or plates on plate compactors, most Plate Compactor plates are wide and large, which means that the Plate Compactors are better for open and large flat areas.
On the other hand, hand tampers are portable and easier to maneuver, which means that they are a better choice for smaller areas, spot areas, small trenches, and when tamping on slopes.
The handle
The three main materials used for the handle of the Hand Tamper tool are wood, steel, and fiberglass. Each one has advantages and disadvantages:
- The wooden handles can easily fit the head, are repairable if not damaged severely, and are easy to replace if damaged beyond repair. On the other hand, they are very sensitive to environmental conditions like moisture. The good news is that if you have to replace them you will find a replacement wooden handle for tamper tools everywhere. Moreover, the wooden handle has to have a straight wood grain pattern.
- The fiberglass handles are lighter, more durable, and sometimes have no-slip grips; but their long exposure to direct sunlight damages them severely, they cannot be replaced easily and are more expensive than the wooden ones.
- The steel handles add more weight which can be good or bad depending on your tamping technique. They also have some type of grip which is nice to have because these metal handles get cold in the winter and very hot in the summer.
How to repair a loose hand tamper handle?
If you have a loose hand tamper handle, there are a few things you can do to repair it. First, try tightening the screws that hold the handle in place. If that doesn’t work, you may need to replace the screws with new ones.
In addition, you can try epoxy or another strong adhesive to reattach the handle to the tamper, however, we don’t recommend it. If the handle is cracked or broken, you may need to replace it. You can find replacement handles at most hardware stores.
Maintenance
If you want to keep your hand tamper compactor for a long time, then you should do some regular maintenance.
- Remove the mud or dirt thoroughly and clean your Hand Tamper with water after each use.
- Use a piece of old cloth to dry it really well.
- Oil their metal parts before you winterize them.
- Store your Hand Tamper tool inside a dry location like a garden tool shed or an outdoor storage cabinet.
- If the handle of the Hand Tamper is wooden then, annually, use a finishing oil in order to finish it and, occasionally, do some light sanding.
As you can see, the Hand Tampers require the typical garden hand tool maintenance.
DIY Hand Tampers – How to make a Hand Tamper
For a DIY Hand Tamper, all you need is a handle, a heavy flat-faced head, and the means to connect them tightly and securely. Here is a simple example of how to make your own hand tamper:
A lightweight Hand Tamper made with a sledgehammer. some plywood, 2 u bolts, and a few screws.
Final Thoughts
The hand tampers are affordable and necessary tools to have in your garden tool arsenal if you are going to level and compact dirt, loose soil or tamp down materials. Using a tamper tool is not difficult if you use it properly. Shopping for the right dirt tamper may seem like an easy choice, but with so many tampers on the market with different features, you can quickly become confused. In our hands-down experience, two things are certain: Getting the best hand tamper is an excellent choice for homeowners and, secondly, they must be heavy!
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