Stout; from everything I've heard, they are a great auger. My only caution would be that if you get the cutting head dull, you are going to either need someone who knows how to sharpen it the right way (difficult in the midwest because these augers don't get used as much here as they do out east) or you'll need to ship it back to Nils to get sharpened which means you are without your auger. The advantage of a Strikemaster/Jiffy, etc is that you can find replacement blades just about anywhere. Just make sure you have a place that knows how to sharpen that cutting head the right way if you are going to get one of those. A bad sharpen job and you won't like that auger.
