ROOT ASSASSIN RAKE

51yo female here to give a personal review. I searched for a rake to pick up acorns and found that this is great for other jobs, too. If you’re going to de-thatch your lawn, this is a MUST HAVE. So lightweight and with a big scoop area, I cleaned up the thatch piles quickly. I flipped it over (like you’d flip your dinner fork to hold your steak while cutting) to scrape and loosen leaves and old stems under the Burberry bushes, then flipped it back over to scoop them out. Never had to touch the prickers!Not sure it’ll be strong enough to scoop mulch, haven’t tried that yet. The tines are plastic so the mulch will need to be loose, not packed down. Another reviewer said it worked well with mulch.Yes, it’s great to scoop loose acorns. Oh, and that sassy red handle! Love it!

Well made, very light! would like to love it. We are unhappy with the rake BUT that is our fault, we didn't buy it for a rake, we hoped it would work better than a normal horse stall fork/picker. It does not! Some reviews say it does, it does not. It is way too small. It actually does work really well, but it is so small it would take all day to do one stall. As a rake it has worked really well. In videos they are cleaning up horse manure outside and I am sure it does work really well for that, but for stalls it is too small.

Update—we’ve decided that I t’s just not useful for the kinds of gardening tasks we wanted to use it for. After a year of favoring different tools for poop cleanup, working in the garden, and leaf cleanup, we decided that this tool just didn’t suit our needs. With a few design changes it would be amazing, but not as is. Sadly we disposed of it.Original—I love the design of the Root Assassin Rake, but I would make a few changes. The pin that holds the rake to the handle fell out the first time I used it. I was able to replace it with a screw and keep on going. I also wish the tines were stronger—I haven’t broken any, but I’m always afraid that I’m going to. I was hoping that I could also use this to pick up dog droppings, but it’s not very effective for that—tines are too far apart, and unless the poop is frozen it will just make a big mess. Great for sifting lumps out of dirt and for leveling out fresh dirt over grass seed—made this chore so easy! Very useful in leaf cleanup as well.

Lightweight and perfectly shaped for picking up dry oak leaves in Northern California. No more bending over to hold the leaves on a normal wire rake while you lift it into the bin. It's molded plastic, so hopefully it lasts a long time.

I actually like raking, so you can stop reading this now and move on to the next worthy review if you cannot fathom that being true. I have had experience with multiple rakes over the last 20 years of raking over 100,000 leaves a year here in the northeast. I was excited to try out this one out mostly because I have been sold on how much a difference a feather weight rake like my favorite, the Fiskars Leaf Rake, has been in making the chore not only easier but more aerobic as you can rake for longer durations before taking a muscle break. Leave blowers seem like the logical practice for those dealing with large acreage lots, but I’m sticking green even though neighbors left and right of me are waking the neighborhood up with decibels of blow beasts reshaping their yards.The Rake Assassin promised low weight with it’s aluminum shaft and plastic raker but also the benefit of being able to forgo the labor-intensive bending needed to pick up, lift and load a garbage can with its shovel like design. This function ended up being its best feature after using it for a couple of days of testing out, but it unfortunately compromises the main functionality of raking itself. The rake head design is not wide enough to be efficient in gathering leaves and the stiff plastic used to strengthen the shovel shape doesn’t allow for effective raking. As a result, you end up raking more for the shoveling benefit. And whereas the shoveling works fairly well, it requires using a garbage can with its wideset opening rather than the simpler option of just using bags. Furthermore, it doesn’t eliminate the bending time required to squash the leaves once in the can or bag as part of the usual packing process, so I find it actually more efficient to do the pickup and pack process as one motion with a convention rake.Delivery was great. Packaging was great. Assembly was pretty straight forward, although I added one layer of duct tape on the shaft after screwing on the rake head to eliminate a slight but annoying wobble and get a snugger fit.My Fiskars Leaf Rake remains the pro raker’s best choice in my opinion, but this Rake Assassin can have its purpose to those looking to rake mostly large sand and gravel areas. I actually used it to rake powdery snow off my gravel driveway with decent results. At the price I paid however, this is not a great value. It just made the premium price of the Fiskars Leaf Rake Fiskars Leaf Rake seem more like a bargain. Happy raking to all!

The rake is made of light plastic and needs to be used in a gentle manner so the plastic doesn't break. The bottom piece, that is the rake part, fell off after the first use. There was a silver metal piece that you click into place when putting the rake together. It was not a secure/tight hold and just fell out. I taped the bottom of the rake to the middle part so I could still use it the rake up acorns. It is definitely not an "assassin" rake. Over priced for sure.

Easy to put together. This is the second rake of this type I've purchased. Great for fall leaf cleanup. After trimming bushes, makes clean up easy. Just rake, scoop trimmings, and into the polycart it goes. No bending over.

Quickly assembled three pieces into a sturdy rake- I easily cleaned out a messy bed in SC under a crep myrtle and some hydrangeas which was a mess with old pine straw- the shovel function made cleanup easy as pie. No broken tines and rake held up perfectly.A great buy for a small yard.