Making garden tools for profit

It is 120 acres tillable and I'm thinking I'll be going for mostly hay in the crops and beef on the pasture. Other suggestions I've gotten are pumpkins and corn mazes. My town already has a corn maze and pumpkins aren't worth terribly much here unless you grow perfect ones and sell 'em at farmers markets. The town used to have a farmers market but they have done away with it.

I was thinking I could build a less common garden tool instead. I could probobly make one or two a day for about 30 dollars in materials I might be able to do 3 or 4 a day in the winter. These tools sell for 130 bucks in Johnny's seed catalogs. I have thought of a couple ways to make these tools more versatile and have built one for myself to use in my own garden. Maybe I could market them to Jungs or Seed savers for 80 bucks and sell them on ebay for 120 bucks.

How does one go about finding out if a design is patented? Also, how much does one have to improve a design in order to avoid patent infringement? Has anyone here ever tried to sell welded products of thier own design and profited from it? What about product liability for when someone trips over it? I figured I'd offer five year warrenty for parts but this item would just about be indestructable and would be very hard to wear out.

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