Intro bird noise courtesy of https://orangefreesounds.com/whippoor...
The wood is sweet gum. It's a decently strong wood, but it's just not used much in lumber because the boards are so prone to twisting. But since I'm not sawing it into boards, it seems to work out fine.
This project was quick but a lot of fun. I was actually surprised by how much I liked the feel of the shovel. While I was doing the dry fitting of the handle in the shovel, I realized I really like the thickness of the handle near the top. It's about twice as thick as a normal tool handle, but it feels perfect in my hands, so I decided to leave it how it was and not shave it down thinner. Another thing that I surprisingly liked about the shovel was the fact that it has a slight bend away from the user. it winds up being really comfortable to use because of that. for example, you don't have to lower the handle as close to the ground as you normally would when scooping dirt out of a hole.