Scythe Blade Special - Peening and progress

 This is going to be a bit of a specialist article, only really of interest to Scythe-Nerds!

Yesterday two of us went on a scything course with Clive Leeke : one of us had never used a scythe, and the other one (me) was very aware of having picked up lots of terrible habits over the last 6 years, and was therefore not keen to teach the other, so as not to pass on those evil habits.

So we went off to Sonning Common for the day, and one of us learned, while the other re-learned.

The most interesting part of the day - for me - was a chance to re-learn the skill of peening, which is something I haven't needed to do, so I'd forgotten all the details.  

Peening is the act of hammering the very edge of the blade, to "draw down" or "stretch out" a bit more of the metal, in order to create a new cutting surface. It is done when the edge becomes chipped or damaged, or has been honed ("sharpened") so many times that the razor-thin edge has been worn away. 

So we peen down a bit more metal, from the bulkier part of the blade, to get a bit more wafer-thin metal which we can then hone.

Simple, huh?

I was beginning to wonder if my own blade was due for peening, as I have been using it for the last six years without cease... and my friend Jon, from Canal Club, was wondering the same, because his blade was quite battered. Neither of us were quite brave enough to peen our own blades, so he lent me his battered one to take along to the course, in the hope that we would be able to peen it for him.

For those of a nerdish disposition, all the blades shown here are 65cm Ditch blades.

Now we get to the nerdy bit: here are a long sequence of photos of the cutting edges of our blades, as seen under high magnification.  I took the first set of photos because I wanted to see if there was a discernible difference between my own, current, blade, and my spare back-up brand-new, never-used blade.

So let's start with them. On with the nerdery! 

In all these photos, we are looking down on the blade, the top edge of the photo is heading up towards the rib, the bottom edge of the photo is the cutting edge. And, as they appear in sequence, I was starting at the beard and working out towards the tip.

First set: my own, current blade:

My interpretation: quite a nice, straight, consistent cutting edge. No major nicks or dings. Better than I had thought it would be: but what would Clive say? Well, on arrival, he pronounced my blade to be super-sharp, so I was well pleased.

Right, now here's my new, un-used blade for comparison:

To my surprise, not hugely different. This blade had, on arrival, been peened and honed (along with my other one) by my friend Jim, who is very much an expert on such things. So it does not have a perfect "factory finish" but is, as it were, ready for use.

I think the main difference between the two, is that my blade in use, shows a lot of diagonal markings from honing.

Now we turn to Jon's blade: this is what it looked like when he dropped it off:

Overall, pretty straight along the bottom, I thought: not as bad as you would have thought from looking at it, if you see what I mean. There is a definite progression: the first photos are at the beard end, and the cutting edge is pretty straight. Then we get to the main working part of the blade, and there's a bit more wavyness going on. Then there is the one almighty ding, quite close to the tip.

Ok: brace yourselves! Here's Jon's blade again, after the course: peened, and honed, and tested.

Now you can see the fresh, shiny new metal which has been peened - or "stretched" - off the blade, to form a new cutting edge, thin enough to be honed and made super-sharp.

I am sure that a better peener would have made a more even job of it, but it's not bad, for a beginner, and already it is a lot less wavy, and most of the smaller dings have now gone, as new metal has been brought down to fill the gaps, as it were.

Even the Big Ding is better than it was: Clive explained that we could, had we wished, have removed it entirely, by peening more metal down around and over it, then filing off the excess to get back to a straight cutting edge. But as this ding is situated right up by the tip, he said it was not worth spending a lot of time and energy in doing "advanced peening" on it, when it was not on the part of the blade which did the majority of the cutting work, particularly as "advanced peening" carries a risk of cracking the blade, which would be bad: so that level of remedial work would be better carried out by someone more experienced than us.

One point of interest for scythe-nerds, and for myself and Jon, was Clive's comment, on first seeing Jon's blade, was that, despite all the wavy bits and little dings, it was still super-sharp and very effective. 

Does that mean that it didn't really need to be peened? Well, technically, yes: while the blade can still be honed, and while it keeps that sharpness for a reasonable time, you don't really need to peen. But it was good to get the dings out, and I am sure that Jon will be glad that he's put off the awful moment of having to peen, for another few years!

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Scything time again!

Ah, the hot sunny days of August, in England *glances out of window at crashing rain*... 

Yes, apart from the rain, it's summer, and that means it's time to scythe down the grassy "meadows" again: the flowering is mostly over, and now we need to remove the top growth to keep the meadow areas impoverished, and to give the seeds a chance to get to soil level, so that they will germinate for next year.

It's been a busy year for scything, this year: I seem to have been at it once or twice a week, for the last several weeks!

 

This is actually a lovely thing: I'm very pleased that more people are having a go at "letting the grass grow longer for wildflowers", which includes this year's "No Mow May" movement. 

 

So what I have been scything, recently?

Here's the first one, a small suburban garden, with sweeping crescents of what I call "long lawn", ie not much in the way of flowers, but lots of grasses:

In this garden, we live in hope that some wildflowers will - one year - appear. We've been allowing the grass to grow long since 2018, and so far, as you can see, it's mostly just grass. 

I did take along a spare pot of Bee Orchid which I'd grown from seed, and last year that was added to the grassy area. But Bee Orchid are notorious for their poor germination, and their strange habits: one year you will have a couple of flowers, the next year maybe none at all, then on another year, there will be lots of them! They are a rule unto themselves.

But we live in hope.

Then there is this garden - right:  a rather lovely long, thin, tree-filled section of garden, which the owner allows to grow long every year, with mown paths: we get quite a few Pyramidal Orchid there, as well as the usual selection of lotus corniculatus (Bird's foot trefoil),  and various vetches.

As you can see, quite wild and woolly at this time of year, and definitely due for scything.

Ah, that's much better!

This one took me two afternoons to do, this year: usually the garden owner comes along to rake up the grass, after I cut it: but this year, ill health prevented him helping, so I had to do both jobs, which therefore took twice as long. 

And this photo only shows the middle section - there's quite a lot more of it!

But it was worth it, to see it all neat and tidy again. 

And then, just to make a change, I was working on my local canal last weekend, and was sent into the cut, to scythe down the reeds so that we could get access to the other bank, in order to do some very necessary tree trimming.

An interesting experience, working on very squishy - "uncertain" - footing, with reeds rather taller than I am, as you can see. 

But the scythe was the perfect tool for the job, as I could cut very nearly the full width, in one sweep. 

One inch at a time...

 Here's one I did earlier: a small but interesting meadow, again with mown paths, which is getting more colourful by the month, as we keep adding specific plants to it: by scattering seed, and by adding plug plants of various wildflowers.

Here, the grass is so good that we make hay from it... and here I am, halfway through scything it down.

This was a dreadful job, as we had had heavy rain the previous week, which had utterly flattened it, which makes it hard work for me.

But, perseverance paid off, and I got it all chopped down, and into neat windrows. The Client then spent the next week turning and re-turning the windrows, to try to dry it out: but the weather was against them, and in the end about half of it was not dry enough to store, so it was given to the chickens, for them to scratch about on.

Why do I find all this scything to be so peculiarly pleasant? As I said on an earlier post, this is, I think, a great quote:

"There's a massive contradiction between fostering a wild-flower meadow and the brutal savagery of a stinking, angry-sounding strimmer."

 

I love the concept of the "brutal savagery" of the petrol strimmer. I mean, it's so true! They are noisy, smelly, they use both petrol and oil, the operator has to wear ear defenders, a visor, with eye protection as well (if they are sensible): steel toecap boots, long sleeves, anti-vibration gloves, long trousers... they have to carry the fuel, it stinks out their car, they leak fuel and oil everywhere, and they spit the bits all over the place.

Compare that to me in shorts and a tee-shirt, no gloves, no ear defenders: whistling gently to myself as I swish, swish, swish, the grass down, in nearly total silence, leaving it in neat (ish) rows, to be made into hay if required.

 

And that really sums it up, for me: if  you go to the trouble of growing your own little bit of wildflower meadow, if you clearly care about the wildlife, the environment: why on earth would you then allow someone to brutalise it, with a petrol strimmer? 

 

 

 

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Strimmer? I am never using one again, ever!

And why not, you ask? 

Answer: I have a modern Austrian Scythe, bought a couple of years ago - err, actually, it's now several years ago! -  for using at weekends when out volunteering with my local canal restoration group. Then, the following year,  when I started getting the usual requests from clients to bring my strimmer for specific jobs - one client had a mass of nettles, several of them have wildflower meadows, then there's trimming the rough stuff around trees, in the orchard, under benches and so on - instead of the noisy petrol strimmer, I took along my scythe and did the jobs with that: I was really impressed with how easy, quick and quiet it was, and the quality of the job was no less than it used to be with a strimmer. 

I have always hated using a strimmer, due to the noise, the stinging splatter of bits up your legs, the need for a steaming-up visor, sweaty gloves and ear-muffs, the noise, the smell of petrol - oh, did I mention the noise? Not to mention having a car than stinks of petrol for the rest of the week. 

My scythe may be a little slower, but it's silent (nearly), so I can do it as early in the morning as I like, without frightening the neighbours: it cost no more than a decent quality strimmer, but it doesn't use any fuel other than my energy and some water, and is in fact very nearly cost-free to use. When I use it, I can hear the birds singing, I can wear shorts and bare hands. 

To be fair, it does take a little while to learn how to use it, and how to sharpen it, but not long, and you don’t need to be “expert” in order to do a perfectly acceptable job.

As an example, here - left - is a rough area which needs attention once or twice a year. As you can see, it has breast-high Cow Parsley, but what you can't see is the underplanting of thistles, burdock, and what-have-you, which used to foul the Client's own strimmer. 

Twenty minutes later, it's all lying flat on the ground, ready to be raked up and stuffed into the compost pen. 

In instalments....

People always ask “how fast is it, compared to a strimmer?" 

That's the wrong question, for several reasons: firstly, it's not a competition between one and the other. There is no competition, in my view: I will never use a strimmer again, I will be using my scythe instead. (NB, "For Sale, Petrol Strimmer, contact me for details.") (Joke: they were both sold, within a year of getting my scythe.)

Secondly, it's not about speed, it's about enjoying the work rather than sweating yourself to death inside protective clothing, terrifying the wildlife for miles around, and setting teeth on edge in all the neighbouring houses. And there is an incredible sense of self worth, to be using your own muscles to do a job that other people need petrol and complex machinery to do. 

Thirdly, I have never, EVER, had anyone come up to me and start chatting while I was strimming. Dogs would yap, babes would cry, windows would shut, but no-one ever stopped me to talk about it. Scything, on the other hand... everyone and his dog wants to have a closer look, ask "why are you not using a strimmer?" and tell me stories about their great-great grandfathers… which sometimes means that it can take a little longer to get the job done. 

 Fourthly, a scythe will go through wet grass with no problem, which compares very favourable to a strimmer: no more chewy messes of mashed greenery clogging up the head. 

And fifthly, need I say it? In these days of eco awareness, and wildlife consideration, it seems that turning to the scythe is an obvious step to take. 

So how long does it take to learn, and to use? The friend who showed me his (stop laughing, I can hear you) gave me a ten-minute lecture, a quick demo and then let me have a go, correcting my stance as we went. I then bought my own one, and went on a one-day course, which was great fun: and now I am perfectly competent.

 I won't win any competitions, and I certainly don't leave it looking like a manicured lawn, but having just watched a local company hack their way, with strimmers, through one Client's meadow, then spend hours raking up the mess afterwards, I can truthfully say that I am no worse than they are. 

It takes barely a minute or two to set it up or pack it away: it’s so sharp that it goes through nettles, burdock, thistles, young plum root suckers (memo to self, watch where you’re going…) and things which my strimmer used to leave as ragged stumps: and it leaves the cut grass in neat rows instead of flinging it all over the place. 

You do have to rake up the cut grass afterwards, but hey, it's a crop! Let it dry out, and you certainly won't need to buy hay for the guinea pigs for a year or so. 

Now, I don’t want to get started on any eco-warrior, hippy-chick rubbish about being in tune with Mother Earth etc etc, but I really think that more of us should consider casting aside the two-stroke smoke-screen and the ear-splitting strimmer whine in favour of the scythe: we’re all a bit quick to reach for the power tools these days, but there is a massive satisfaction in gently swinging a tool which is ancient, but which is so well designed, which gets the job done, uses no petrol, and which attracts so much positive attention. 

And the down sides? Just three of them, so far: 

Firstly, you are using a very, VERY sharp blade: in use, the only real danger is to onlookers stupid enough to stand behind your left shoulder, but honing - every ten minutes or so - needs care, as does walking around carrying it. 

Secondly, the scything is the easy bit, it's raking up all the grass that takes the time. 

And thirdly, you get a lot of Grim Reaper jokes!

 

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"What's the worst thing about using a Scythe?"

...some-one asked me the other week.

I tell you -  using a scythe is a constant attraction to other people, they just can't stop coming up and asking questions!

So, what's the worst thing?

Well, if you'll excuse the expression, it's all the hippy-shit that goes with it.

I use my scythe because it is the right tool for the job, it's quick, it's quiet, it's nice to use, and I hate strimmers. Not because I want to be in tune with nature, or because I am rebelling against the totalitarian state ("what?") or, what was it now? "as an expression of your rejection of being repressed by our industrialisation process". No, I didn't understand what she was on about, either.

I like the satisfaction of using my own muscle power to get the job done, rather than just tiring them out holding some heavy, whining piece of machinery.

I love being able to still hear the birdies singing, and being able to have conversations with passers-by, while working bare handed and not muffled by layers of protective clothing.

I even quite like the reactions of passers-by: no-one (so far) has laughed at me, and I get some interesting comments. Some people are quite taken aback at first, then when they stand and watch for a while, and talk to me, they realise that I am actually completely modern, and fairly normal (using "normal" as a general term...).

 Here's a very nice little meadow, which I scythe every year in July: the grass gets well above knee-height, so the Client's mower won't go near it.

So, I spend one afternoon a year with my scythe, and he spends about one hour a year raking up my neat piles and windrows (which is what we scythers call a pile, only long). 

No fossil fuels, no stinking up my car, no leaking oil etc in all directions: just me, swishing away, silently sweating. But nowhere near as much as I would do, if I were wearing full PPE in order to use a stinky strimmer!

Certainly I am not any sort of eco-warrior, despite being a long-standing member of the local canal restoration group (and a former folk singer, but we don't talk about that *shudders theatrically*). I eat meat - lots and lots of meat - I drive a car (ok I keep my cars until they are between 9-14 years old, based on the last two, but that's because I am sensible, not because I am eco-mad), I have a solid business background, short hair,  and I don't wear open-toed sandals. Did I miss any blatant generalisations or cliches?

Within a year of buying my lovely modern Austrian scythe, I sold both my strimmers.

This says it all really: now that I have a real scythe, I no longer need my strimmers, and I quickly realised that I would never, ever, ever use them again. So I sold them. Yay! (and I used the money to buy myself more MEAT to eat!) (Sorry, Max, and all other confirmed vegetarians out there...)

Diversion: in conversation with a Client, and discussing vegetarians - we talk about all sorts of things, my Clients and I - the question arose:

Mr Client:  "What do you call someone who is definitely not a vegetarian - that is, someone like you, who eats meat?"

 Me:  "Normal."

End of diversion, please drive on. 

So, getting back to scythes:  a fellow gardener, Susan Cohan, wrote this on the ThinkinGardens site a couple of years ago - she was writing from the USA, but the point is valid here and now:

"I don’t support the use of small backpack, gasoline powered trimmers of any variety, but wonder why with the current movement for all things handmade and artisinal that gardeners haven’t taken up the cause with more hand driven pruning?  Is it lack of skill or interest?  Did lopers and hedge pruners and rakes get forgotten?  Is it because it takes time to learn the methods and when to put those into practice?"

That's a very interesting question, I thought: she's right, what with everyone cracking on about pollution, global warming, CO2 etc etc etc etc etc, why am I still the only professional gardener I know, who uses a scythe? 

I'm not quite the only one who runs half-day training courses on how to clip topiary with shears, the old-fashioned way (left: halfway through...), but there's not many options to learn this skill.

Finally, a point which I read somewhere, a while back, which I think is such a valid comment, that I might even get myself a T-shirt printed, with the following slogan:

"There's a massive contradiction between fostering a wild-flower meadow, and the brutal savagery of a stinking, angry-sounding strimmer."

How very true.

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Top Tips: instant makeover - lawn edges and mulch

Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

Visitors due? About to put the house on the market? Wanting to take a nice photo, but the garden looks scruffy?

No matter what the time of year, an instant makeover for a garden is to clip the edges of the lawn, and to throw some mulch onto the beds.

If you have time to cut the grass, that's great, but if there isn't time to do the whole lawn, clipping the edges immediately improves the look.  It's a bit like not having time to go and get a haircut, but if you just trim your fringe, you suddenly look a lot tidier. 

And the mulching - there is nothing like a quick layer of fresh mulch to make a bed look tidy and well-kempt.

Here's a nice example - left: this bed looked as though a bomb had hit it, half an hour earlier.

A quick weed-round, a quick clipping of the edge, and a bag-and-a-half of mini bark chips, and look! Stunning!

 

 

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

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How To... Clear the Meadow Path

This is not so much a "how to" article as a "hey, look at my great scythe!" sort of article.

This dates back to early June, when a Client sent me an impassioned plea - "we can't get into the meadow any more, help!" so I grabbed my scythe and went round to see what was going on.

Oh dear, I see the problem.

Yes, it's a bit hard to get in through the gate, isn't it?

And the grass is rather too long for the mower, isn't it?!

Luckily, the scythe is quite literally designed for this situation, as it loves long grass, it loves cutting wet grass, and with a bit of practise, it's easy to manoeuvre it around narrow entrances and odd corners.

And there it is, done.

OK, I didn't show you the huge piles of cut grass which I had to laboriously rake up and cart off to the compost bins (which were then somewhat overflowing, oops), nor did I mention the three times I had to stop and make conversation with neighbours, passers-by etc.

It's an odd thing, you know, but when I had a petrol strimmer, not one person ever, EVER, stopped me for a conversation while I was using it.

Not once.

Now, every time I get my scythe out, people stop to ask questions.

Which makes a mockery of the question "is a scythe faster or slower than a strimmer?"

A-scything we go.. eat you heart out, Poldark!

Ah, happy days, a chance to use my scythe again, second time this year: one of my Clients has a wonderful display of spring bulbs in their front lawn, but the downside is that once you cut back the grass, it looks nasty and brown for a couple of weeks until it recovers.

As they were participating in the village Open Gardens, we decided not to cut back the bulb foliage and grass until after the opening, on the grounds that overlong grass areas clearly said "aha, you should've been here in spring, we had BULBS!" whereas brown grass just says "dead grass".

So it didn't get cut back as normal, but was left to grow - and a surprising number of wild flowers appeared, so much so that we are now thinking about adding in some more of them, to make it prettier while we are waiting for the bulbs to die back.

Once the Open Garden day was over, we realised that the mower was not going to be able to get through the knee-high grass at all, so I took my scythe along and cleared it.

First job - pick up my scything kit.

This includes the blade and snathe (long wooden handle), along with the white pack which contains the side handles, my honing stone, water sheath and so on.

I also take two water bottles (one for me, one for honing) and the just-in-case first aid kit.

Well, better to take it and not need it...

Here is my first target, a small Magnolia, thoroughly swamped by the overlong grasses.

Three minutes later,  all done. One Magnolia safely released from being smothered, one pile of new-mown hay to be raked up and disposed of.

There is such a pleasure in scything - it's so much nicer than pushing a mower around.

I then moved around the lawn, taking down all the long grass patches.

Job done - all I have to do is rake up the rest of the mowings and pop them onto the compost heap.

And all without breaking into a sweat!

An unusual parting gift...

One of my clients is, sadly, moving away shortly, and the other week they presented me with a leaving gift:

Knowing my interest in scythes, they very kindly thought that it would be of more use to me than mouldering in their barn, unused even for Halloween costumes...

...crikey, what a thought, walking down the street with a lethally sharp blade hanging over your shoulder, and a mask on...

No - best not to think about it.

This old English scythe came as part of the accoutrements of the house when they moved in - it was in a dark corner of the barn - so they didn't know exactly how old it is. It's fairly contemporary, definitely C20th,  and they thought it might be post-war.

However, I took it along to my Scything course last weekend, and Clive the instructor told us that yes, it was an English scythe, yes, it was heavy and horrible to use, and it might not be as old as we thought - they were made right up to the end of the 70s, the very last one being made in 1982, which is staggering.  Of course, the timing coincides with the invention of the strimmer, in the 60s, which quickly gained popularity ("new toy") and put the scythe-makers of the 70s out of business.

The handle was most likely Willow, he said, and would have been steamed and bent into shape, so it was not a naturally occurring curved branch. The blade itself was badly bent at the tang (where it attaches to the handle) which is probably why the owners stopped using it, and presumably bought a strimmer instead, tucking this monster away into a dark corner of the barn where it lay, ignored, for decades.

I have no idea what I will do with it - Clive suggested the best place for these English scythes was hanging up in a pub, so I might try to find a pub which lacks one. Or possibly a museum of rural life?

If anyone has any suggestions... do let me know!Did you enjoy this article? 

 

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Peening: non longer a mystery!

Well, I did it: I went on a Scythe training course, and learned how to peen my blade.

For all those out there who have asked the question, and/or expressed trepidation about it, it's not that bad!

Having done the course, I would firmly and definitely recommend attending a course (even if you are quite competent with your scythe) to learn about blade maintenance and therefore peening: there is only so much you can learn from reading about it, and although you can get a much better idea from watching some of the many YooToob videos about it, there is no substitute for sitting on a bench with someone knowledgeable watching closely, and being encouraged to do it yourself.

I even made a bit of a bish on the bit I did - I hammered twice in the same place instead of moving the blade along, resulting in a "tab" of metal extending beyond the line of the blade. "No problem," said Clive, our very nice instructor "just tap it up with the hammer and peen over it again." Alternatively, I could have filed off the excess and gone back to peening.

This shows that you can't really ruin a blade - or should I say, if you accidentally spoil the blade, someone more experienced can tell you how to recover it. Clive even told us that he had one particular old blade which he used for teaching, which was so "badly" peened that the blade was wavy and corrugated - but it still cut grass just as well as a perfectly flat one!

We were working with a peening jig, a clever little device that comes as part of the kit if you buy from Simon Farlie at The Scythe Shop - Clive commented that freehand peening was quite a skill, and that as the peening jig was pretty much foolproof to use, he saw no reason against everyone using one.

So choose a kit that comes with a peening jig, is my advice.

What is peening, exactly?  "Peening is a cold working process in which the surface of the component is deliberately deformed, in the basic method, by hammering."

And what does "cold working process" mean, exactly?

It's not like forging which requires extreme heat and skill: it's done cold, so you can do it outdoors, in the field, in the shed, or on the kitchen table, and you only need the peening jig and a hammer..

It's a "working" process - you "work" or change the metal,  manually, from one state (thick) into another (thinner).

And you do it by hammering. In our case, the skill of the hammering is removed by using the peening jig, so although we still hit it with a hammer, we don't hit the blade directly, we hit the jig and that transfers the energy to the blade in a controlled manner, and in just the right place.

I won't write a great long description about how it's done: you can find dozens of accounts on the internet, and - as mentioned - you really need to be shown how to do it, then be able to have a go yourself under supervision. It took about ten minutes to see how it was done, have a go, make a mistake, fix the mistake, and become confident. I am now fully prepared to peen my own blades as and when they need it.

The good news from the course is many fold - firstly and best, my style/technique was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was, and came in for very little criticism at all. Clive suggested that raising my upper handle a notch would cure my habit of missing the grass at the very end (left) of my stroke, and it certainly helped: I then felt the swing was uncomfortable, and realised that my lower handle was too low, so I moved that up a notch as well. Logically this should not have made any difference to my mowing, as the relationship between the two handles remained the same, but in fact it felt better in use, as I felt I was "stooping" less.

The rule about "lower handle to be on the point of your hip" is a guideline, not a firm rule and although it makes a good starting place, it is worth trying slight variations until you find the combination that works.

Second revelation of the day - the missing piece in my puzzle was my lower handle thumb position: I had been holding the handles as though using a wheelbarrow, with my thumbs wrapping round to make a circle with my fingers. I tried putting my left-hand thumb on top of the handle instead, and this instantly made it much easier to keep the blade right down on the ground at the end of each stroke.

"Sorted!"

Thirdly, my honing technique is pretty good, and my blade, on arrival, was awarded "Oh! Er, that's pretty sharp!" from Clive. Which was good news, considering I hadn't sharpened it after the last time I'd used it. I think it's all that practice using a steel on kitchen knives: it's very much the same technique but instead of wiping the knife up and down the steel, you wipe the sharpening stone down the blade from alternate sides, at a similar sort of angle. Again, hard to describe in words, easy to demonstrate.

Final good point of the day, and I'm a bit shamefaced as I say this - the other course attendees were perfectly nice people! I had been putting off going on a course as I had assumed the others would be dippy hippy types: in fact, I wrote a post about it then didn't have the nerve to publish it. It started off like this:

"I'd love to go on a course to improve my style - frankly, my dears, I could do with some improving - but I just can't bear the thought of the other course attendees: they are all going to be hippies, aren't they?

Two thirds of them will be bra-less women in tie-dye, with ribboned hair and nose-rings (ugh) and the others will be blokes with pony-tails and/or those horrible felted dreadlock-things instead of proper hair.

If lunch is supplied, it will be calves' liver and wet polenta or something equally horrible - tofu, possibly,  or some sort of veggie-burger.

Conversation will be earnest - it was bad enough going on my three recent rubbish recycling trips, I can tell you....and I will no doubt lose patience with one or more of them and shout "No wonder you can't get a job, looking like that! For heaven's sake tidy yourself up!" like a middle-aged parent.  *sigh* "

Yes, you can see why I didn't take that one any further, can't you? Anyway, I was wrong, wrong, wrong: my group comprised three women and four men, all perfectly nice grown-ups, and no-one had a nose-ring, and everyone had proper hair.

By the end of the day we were all mowing away like mad things, and those who did not already have a scythe had firm decisions about which blade would be most appropriate for their intended use. Andy of the Earth Trust (where the course took place) was at least half-way considering converting the Earth Trust from strimmers to scythes,  which pleased Clive immensely!

And best of all, I finally had a firm opinion on the subject of Naming: the scythe is the name of the tool. If you use it to cut cereal, ie a stalk with grain at the top such as barley, wheat, rye etc then you are Reaping. If you cut grass, ie to make hay, then you are Mowing.

So there is no such noun as Scythers, thank heavens (horrible word). We are either Mowers or Reapers, depending on what we are cutting.

I still think that we need a funky modern name for "people who use scythes to mow/reap/chop weeds" as Mowing doesn't really give the right impression - if you say that you are a Mower (no, we're not getting onto the Merry Mower-Maid discussion again!) then people assume you push a petrol-driven thing around, which requires no skill at all. And most of us on the course would be doing "rough" cutting, of weeds, canal banks, reserves, etc, which is technically neither reaping nor mowing.

So come on, all you scythe enthusiasts out there, let's come up with a better name for what we do! 

 

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Scythe equipment

It's lovely to see how much interest this whole scythe thing is generating, I wish I'd started writing about it earlier!

Today - equipment.

I have an Austrian scythe, so if you have something other than that, this might not apply to you: and if you are still thinking about getting a scythe, then I would strongly recommend the Austrian scythe, it's light, well balanced, and easy to use.

I bought mine from Simon Fairlie at The Scythe Shop, (I do like a website that says what it does) and he supplies a good package of information, both on his website and with the documentation accompanying your new scythe.

Right, scythe equipment.

The first thing I bought was a long canvas bag, in which to carry the blade and all the odds and ends which I think are necessary and/or useful. After a few times, I found that the odd bits of equipment were a bit lost inside what is quite a big bag - and also, early on, I nearly lost my whetstone and holder  because I had left them on a fence post to dry before I packed them away... and yes, I walked off without them and had to tear back at top speed before they disappeared!

So I made myself a Scythe Tool Roll with a pocket for each item:

Here it is, showing you what it contains. From the left, there is the lower handle, then the upper handle, the sheath (I have the copper one, as you can see), the whetstone for honing, a spanner for tightening handles, and the allen key for tightening the blade holders.

Then there is a small handful of "spares" which I thought was sensible - I haven't yet dropped one of the small washers or nuts onto long grass and been unable to find it again, but I can see it happening one day -  and the wooden wedge, which I don't use at this time, but I might need it one day, when my style improves.

Here - right - is the tool roll with everything tucked in place.

There is a small pocket on the lower right-hand corner for the washers, nuts and wingnuts, and a slit for the wooden wedge.

The top flaps down to cover the pockets, which keeps everything in place and helps prevent them rubbing against each other in transit.

 

I then roll it up from the right-hand side into a slightly lumpy bundle...

 ...which is then easy to pick up and transport.

here you go, nice handy size.

Out in the field, every pocket should be filled, so if at the end of a session there is an empty pocket... well, we know what that means!

("turn around, go back and look for whatever is missing!")

So far this has proved to be a good philosophy, as there have been several occasions where I've put something down and not realised it: the sheath and the whetstone are the worst for nearly being left behind!

The best thing I was given was a plastic scythe cover, made for me by my friend Jim, who got me interested in scything last year. This makes it a great deal easier to move it around!

Here it is - very simple, just a piece of stout plastic sheet, bent over and fastened with rivets.


The blade curls neatly inside it, and there is a lovely low-tech shoe-lace at the end for tying round the blade.

Here's the cover with the blade part-way out, to show you.

Being somewhat curved, the cover has to be wide enough to accommodate the whole thing.

It is deliberately oversized, so that the blade has plenty of room to dry, and doesn't "sweat" inside it.

I have heard tales of the canvas covers absorbing water and causing - sharp intake of breath - rust!!!

So I'm very happy to have nice wipe-clean plastic covers, that don't encourage rust!

Finally there is the bag itself: it cost a few pounds from an Army and Navy Surplus store, and is pretty cheap and cheerful - no pockets, nothing fancy, just a plain long bag with a zip.

Here it is stuffed ready for action - the scythe blade in its cover just fits nicely inside the bag.

I felt a bit of a fool going round the shops with a tape measure, but it was worth it to get something long enough that no part of the blade - covered or not - sticks out.

In case you wondered about the contraption on the end, I added a couple of webbing straps, to hold a couple of water bottles.

You need water for the whetstone, hence the old milk carton (the lids live inside the bag when not in use, so the bottles stay fresh) and I generally get quite thirsty when working outside, so I take a bottle of water to drink, as well.

Yes, I suppose I could just take two ordinary bottles of water... maybe my tidy mind likes to have one of "dirty" water, which can be refilled at water butts if necessary, and one of "clean" water to drink.  Anyway, there they are: I found that inside the bag, they tended to fall over and sometimes leak, so it seemed easier to hang them on the outside where they stay upright.

As well as taking the tool roll and the blade, I take along an old pair of gloves, one of which (the right hand one) is stuffed into my pocket when working, so that I can pull it out for honing.

I take both of them, in case I feel the need to wear gloves - but mostly I enjoy the luxury of being able to work bare-handed.

The WD40 is used at the end of the day, once I've wiped off the grass from the blade and let it dry, I give it a squirt and put it in the cover for transport home.

And the first aid kit? Oh, I'm a big believer in "better to have it and not need it, than the other way round" so I assembled a kit which includes sticky plasters, antiseptic wipes, scissors, tweezers (for splinters), steri-strip "stitches" in case of slashes; odd dressings and micropore tape, a small tube of savlon, same of antihistamine cream for insect bites: a bandage, some eye-flush (you never know...) and anything else I think might be useful.

So far, the only injury I've had has been a major slash from brambles in the hedge, nothing to do with the scythe at all: and that's how I hope it will stay.

But it's good to be prepared.

So there you go, that's my Scythe Equipment bag: all I have to do is put in the blade, pick up the handle, fill up the water bottles, sling it on my shoulder and off I go, quite self-contained.