Ultimate tool to make fall's main chore easier

As you laze under your favorite backyard tree this weekend, trying to pretend it's still summer, ponder this: Soon enough that tree will dump all of its leaves on your lawn. To get an early start on a dreaded fall chore, we went shopping for five rakes, each with some special, supposedly drudgery-easing feature, such as clog-resistance, commercial-grade strength or adjustability.

The ideal leaf rake is fan-shaped (as opposed to rectangular), says Neil Calvanese, vice president of operations for the Central Park Conservancy in New York City, which looks after about 26,000 trees. Calvanese says his crews need rakes to be durable and inexpensive. Metal tines hold up better than plastic or other materials, he says, but ultimately, the choice is up to the raker. "You've got to like the feel of the rake," he says, "because you're going to be doing it for hours."

To test our five selections, we sacrificed our manicure to help our friend Sandy -- the only person we know who does her own yardwork -- rake her football-field-size property in New England.

We both soured quickly on the pivot rake from Vertex, which has a plastic head that can be tilted at various angles; the head seemed unstable when we put pressure on it.

The deluxe grounds rake from Rittenhouse was super sturdy, but Sandy wasn't happy that its thin metal tines took chunks from her lawn. And we couldn't agree on the metal rake from Smith & Hawken: Sandy liked that its head could adjust from narrow to wide, but we thought the handle was too thin. It made our hands ache.

Best Value this week goes to the Ames clog-free rake from Amazon, with zig-zagging plastic tines that actually didn't clog up too much. And at $12.80, it's about what our expert prefers to pay. Best Overall is the rake that did the best job -- a basic, steel-tined, professional-grade number we bought from Gempler's. As Calvanese says, "When it comes to rakes, the simpler the better."