You Should Love Your Tools

Z + B refreshes, repairs, and customizes vintage and modern garden and hand tools across the San Francisco Bay Area.

Do your tools need some care or repair, either a quick tuneup or a total overhaul? Looking for some custom pieces? Get in touch! We work on pretty much anything, no need for heirloom or collector items.

Come see us in person at the Alameda Point Antiques Fair on August 2‍nd where we sell ready to use vintage tools. ‍

A garden bed with orange and yellow flowers, some green foliage, a wooden fence, and part of a house wall with a window in the background.
A person wearing a tan gardening glove holding a hammer in front of purple flowering plants in a garden.
Close-up of a hand rake with a wooden handle and metal prongs, resting on a cut tree branch, in front of a garden with green plants and soil.
A person's hand wearing a work glove holding a sledge hammer over a flower garden with various colorful flowers and a wooden fence in the background.

What We Do

A person wearing a tan work glove holding a gardening adze with a wooden handle, in a garden with colorful flowers and green plants.

Custom: Starting with a vintage (possibly gold rush era) mattock pick head that had the pick ground off/broken and was completely rusted out, we hand carved an axe style handle from hickory and wedged with walnut. The handle was treated with boiled linseed oil.

A garden fork with a blue handle and metal prongs leaning against a wooden garden bed. Green vine-like plants are growing around the fork and the garden bed, with some sunlight illuminating the scene.

Repair: This pitchfork started as just a rusted head and D-handle, with the original wood handle broken in half. We stripped the rust, removed all original wood, cleaned and painted the metal, and fit a new custom length and thickness hickory handle and matching D-handle piece. The handle was sealed with white tinted boiled linseed oil to keep the hickory looking bright alongside the blue.

A person wearing a tan work glove is holding a pair of black-handled pruning shears in an outdoor garden. The background features vibrant purple flowers and green foliage.

Refresh: These set of classic Corona 80’s had accumulated some wear from use while still in good shape. We disassembled, removed all plant material/resin, spot cleaned rust, resharpened, and oiled. They’re looking great and ready to get back to work.