I'm rather new to ice fishing and would like to start bringing a spud bar to check the ice. I have a 5' digging bar, but it's darn heavy. Before I build one out of black pipe or some other scrap, how heavy should I make it? It seems like a lot of them are around 10 pounds. Is a 2.5 inches broad chisel good? I keep scrap steel around for building stuff. I should be able to find an appropriate piece of pipe in my pile, so it's just my consumables/time that would go into building it.
I was reading that others have a t-handle to keep it from disappearing through the ice, so I may consider that.