Pickaxe the tool. A pickaxe handle (sometimes called a "pickhandle" or "pick helve") without the head is sometimes used, often unofficially, as a baton: for example it is officially sometimes used as a baton in the British Army. In "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, pick handles featured prominently as a weapon used against the migrant farmers. A normal pickaxe handle is made of ash or hickory wood and is about three feet long and weighs about 2.5 pounds. British Army pickaxe handles must, by regulation, be exactly three feet long, for use in measuring in the field. New variant
Digging stick Digging stick In archaeology and anthropology, a digging stick, or sometimes yam stick, is a wooden implement used primarily by subsistence-based cultures to dig out underground food such as roots and tubers or burrowing animals and anthills. The stick may also have other uses in hunting or general domestic tasks. They are common to the Indigenous Australians but also other peoples worldwide. The tool normally consists of little more than a sturdy stick which has been shaped or sharpened and perhaps hardened by being placed temporarily in a fire. Fashioned with handles for pulling or pushing, it forms a prehistoric