You can dig postholes with a shop vac and a new device called a Bull Digger. Chiseled steel tines break up hard packed dirt or gravel, and the shop vac sucks it away. Although Thomas Menna designed the device, it was his wife who had the idea.

"I was breaking packed dirt for a hole with a steel bar and stopping to move the dirt out every few minutes," recalls Menna. "My wife came alongside me with the shop vac and started vacuuming away the dirt as I broke it up. It worked great."

In fact, it worked so great that Menna devised the Bull Digger to take advantage of the idea. The tool has four steel bars that form a framework for the extension tube of a shop vac. Two rubber gaskets, one at the top of the framework and the other at the bottom, hold the tube in place. The tube extends through the second gasket to within two inches of the chiseled ends of the bars. Rubber-handled grips at the top of the framework let the operator drive the chiseled ends into the ground, while a quick twist breaks the compacted material up.

"It's the chiseled ends that do the digging," he says. "Then the vac takes over."

Menna says the Bull Digger works great in gravel, clay, sand or even crushed stone. To dig in loose sand or crushed stone, he suggests placing a pvc or fiber tube sleeve with a 6-in. diameter around the Bull Digger. The sleeve keeps material from caving back into the hole.

The Bull Digger weighs only 15 lbs. To work in remote locations without access to electricity, you need to install an electrical inverter on your pickup or tractor to plug the shop vac into.