THUNDERBAY 18-Inch Lawn Aerator Garden Yard Heavy-Duty Spike Grass Rotary Manual Lawn Aerating Tool

After the assembly and a couple of bandaids later (the spines are sharp) it works much better than I expected in the hard soil we have. Putting it together was fairly easy just need to pay attention so you don't scrape your hands over the spines as they will bite you!

**UPDATED REVIEW**As mentioned in my original review, I requested a replacement of this product, due to the missing holes for the cotter pins at the end of the axle. When I received this replacement, it did have the proper holes, yay! It did mean I had to completely disassemble the work I'd done and start over, which was again a major pain but perfectly doable. This time, all the parts worked together as expected, and I was able to successfully assemble and attempt to use the aerator.The purpose of an aerator is to drive sharp metal spikes into hard ground, thus loosening and breaking it up and making it easier for plants to grow. In order for this to work, there has to be significant downward force on those spikes.To its credit, this aerator is very heavily built from heavy-duty steel. It weighs a lot more than it looks like in its own right. Still, heavier is better, and the main cylinder is hollow. I think its performance could likely be improved by the owner filling it up with something - maybe pea-gravel or sand - to make it even heavier. I haven't tried this myself yet since I don't have anything suitable handy, but I likely will do so in the future.Another way to increase the downward force and effectiveness of the aerator would be to make it possible for the user to physically push down on it. The obvious way to accomplish this would be by adding a T at the end of the handle, so you could grab it with both hands and shove downward. Unfortunately, this aerator only has a straight handle, limiting your downward force to the strength of your grip. I'd strongly suggest this minor design change would significantly improve results.As it is, I rolled the aerator across some hard-packed ground in my lawn, and it accomplished... not very much. It literally just scratched the surface. I could get much better results using an ordinary metal rake. The spikes didn't poke down into the ground to any significant distance at all, maybe a quarter-inch at most.I did give this aerator an additional star since I was able to get it assembled and working as designed, but it still doesn't really work in the sense of accomplishing its intended purpose. If adding more weight helps, I'll come back and update this review again.**ORIGINAL REVIEW**I haven't actually managed to use this device yet, but the assembly was so painful I decided to write an early review. I'll update with more information if I ever do get this thing working.First, each and every aerator "prong" must be individually bolted into the cylinder, by you - and that's a lot. I tried to use a socket set to make this easier instead of the thin flat mini-wrenches provided, but no, these are metric, and since the prongs are quite long only full-depth sockets would work, which I don't have in metric.Then, when assembling the brackets onto the handle, I found that the metal brackets weren't at all molded to the shape of the handle itself - the handle is metal pipe, therefore round, whereas the brackets are entirely flat. Over time this will likely crush the pipe of the handle and cause it to fail; for now, it was just another frustration in trying to get the bolts tightened enough to hold things together without (yet) bending or breaking anything.Finally, the easy part - slip the holes of the brackets onto the ends of the axle, and secure them with washers and cotter pins. Easy! But, wait a sec... there's *no hole for the cotter pins*. Seriously?Now I'm stuck - I've requested a replacement, and this time I'll check to make sure those holes are present. If they are, I'll be presented with having to start all over, from scratch, fastening a complete new set of aerator prongs into the new cylinder - oh, and detaching the original ones so I can send that one back for a credit. Grr.Or, perhaps this is a complete bad batch, and the new axle won't have cotter-pin holes either. I suppose I might try to drill them myself with a hand drill, though drilling perpendicular holes straight through circular things like axles is best done with a vise and drill press, which I don't have.Either way, this has turned into an extremely frustrating science fair project, and, I am seeing other reviewers who seem to have managed to get theirs together, reporting that it's too lightweight and short-handled to be particularly effective. Oh well, we shall see.The materials are very strong and good quality though, so I think this has real potential, but needs someone with a smidgen of common sense to assemble it and think through obvious improvements. Oh, and some QC at the factory to figure out why important manufacturing steps were missed entirely.

Unit seems sturdy and well built. You have to assemble it, That is pretty simple. I used my metric sockets instead of the small wrenches they give you.First use, I realized right away what people meant when they said it was a short handle. You do have to lean over quite a bit. I’m unsure if I needed to put as much pressure as I did or not, but I did put pressure down, making sure it broke through our sod fabric.I wish they would have put a tea handle at the top instead of a straight stick handle. It would have been much easier to put pressure down with two hands at the top rather than one hand at the top and the other hand halfway down.Time will tell if it’s doing its job as I did this first go round the day after our lawn being treated and the morning before our first rain.

I’ll start by saying I wasn’t expecting a whole lot based on the price, but I was fairly surprised. As others have mentioned, you have to add some weight into the end caps for this to actually stick into the ground. As long as your ground isn’t rock hard, you shouldn’t have any problems with the spikes, penetrating the ground. The size is what it is, but you need to know that before ordering. If you have a large yard, you’re going to want something that has more length to it, but if your yard is on the smaller side or in a city, this should work just fine. It seems built well and like it will hold up if taken care of, which is a bit rare today. The only other downside I can think of is that each spike needed individual individually screwed into the barrel which takes a little bit of time but cuts down on shipping cost and overall cost.

Way too lightwieght to work well.