We thought about making dust pans in our shop for a long time. If someone has a broom, naturally they might need a dust pan to go along with it. They had to be cool -- and we wanted to make them right here in our American Broom Shop. We wanted some wood in the design, since we think wood is beautiful. No plastic allowed, of course. Plastic is not what we're about. We did want to reuse something that would otherwise be waste. The design needed to be simple, yet delightfully functional.
We must have looked at a million pictures of dust pans. Okay, maybe just a hundred thousand, but it was a lot. Nothing really struck our fancy. Then a friend stopped by with an old dust pan he found covered in cobwebs at a second-hand store. The pan looked very old and beat up. It was made of wood and thick sheet metal, with a few nails to hold everything together. It was way too heavy for our liking, but something about the design really got us thinking. The handle was round, about the same as a broom handle. The metal was bent and beveled -- we could do that. Ours would have to be a lot lighter in weight for ease of use... Hmmm.
It is our pleasure to bring you the American Broom Shop Dust Pan. Wood and metal has been joined together in plain-dirt-fashion -- an now your good broom has a proper companion! We use broomstick trimmings for our dust pan handles. We cut them to length and bevel them on the sander. The galvanized metal is shaped with our little bending brake. The pan bevel is hammered by hand on the anvil. The wood is our favorite: clear, vertical grain Douglas Fir from the Pacific Northwest. Each pan is given a leather loop, so they are easy to hang.
Totally cool!
— Kevin Miller