Tony Hague wrote: I do like the look of them.
I have extensive woodworking skills and I've worked with ash a lot, steam bending, its always mystified me.
I have a reglected ash long handled West-Country type shovel and most of my digging is done with those digging tools that 'Chillington' makes. It saved my back lots and I now have quite a collection of hacking tools so the conventional spade and fork rarely get used.