Mowing Norfolk Reed

It’s been some time since my last post on this blog, most of

I was recently invited to go to Norfolk, to cut reed with a scythe, by Richard Brown. Sadly, I wasn’t free that weekend, but Richard, and Simon Damant, spent some time cutting reed, using an Austrian scythe, and a simple bow made of willow. They made a short video clip of  the weekend, which Richard has published on Youtube. You can watch it by clicking on the link below.

It looks like the experiment was a success, and hopefully more groups will take up using the scythe, to manage these wildlife habitats.

Enjoy the video

Deano

Scything Festival, Scything Courses, and More Scything

Well it’s been another busy few weeks, with the West Country Scything Festival, running courses here, and in Kent, and my own scything.

The fifth Scything festival was held over the weekend 13th/14th June. I collected two mates en route, and we spent a day in Somerset, helping some friends to cut some grass in their pasture. On the Saturday I taught on the course for experienced mowers, aimed at improving their sharpening (peening), and mowing. Sunday was the day of the competiton, and I qualified for the finals, in second position, behind the eventual winner. I didn’t get in the top three, mainly due to an untidy cut, but am happy to have made it so far. This is going to be my last year competing, and I’ll be helping with the judging next year.

I arrived home Monday night, and had one day to get sorted out before leaving for Kent, to conduct two short courses for a group of volunteers on Thursday. That was followed by another day of preparation, before running one of my scheduled courses, here in Lincolnshire on Saturday.

Things have settled down a little since then. I’m now mowing my own grass, starting at 4.30, for two and a half hours each morning. I’ve done about an acre now, with a bit of help from a friend, with about twelve hours of mowing to achieve that. Three more acres to go. providing that I can maintain the early starts, i should get the whole lot cut by ther middle of July, and will probably give it a second cut in October.

At the festival, I picked up one of Simon’s new peening anvils, the expensive German one, with the little rest on it. It’s a better shape than the others, and I have found it particularly useful when peening lots of blades for courses, as it is a bit quicker than a standard peening anvil.

Bookings are coming in for the remaining courses, and if you’re interested in learning to use a scythe, details can be found on the relevant page.

Deano

Scything Update

Well things have been busy here on my Smallholding, and Scything has been one of the reasons. I held my first Scything course here on the 23rd of May, and I’ve started my own mowing.

The course went well, at least from my perspective. Nobody got hurt, and everybody went away having learnt how to select a blade, peen it, fit it to the snath, adjust the snath, mow, and repair the blade. Again, the freehand peening was no harder than using a peening jig, and I was impressed by how quickly the five attendees got the hang of it. The key is cleaning the blade first. When the blade is clean, and shiny, you can see where the hammer has struck, and do a decent job. With a dull blade, it’s just guesswork. Good luck to you all with your mowing.

My next course here is on the 20th June, and there are only three places left. I’m also going to Kent to run a workshop there, on the 18th. What with teaching at the Scything Festival on the Saturday, Kent on the Thursday, and my own course on the 18th, I will have run three courses in eight days.

I’ve also done some mowing here, but have had to leave grass for the courses. Here’s a short strip that I cut yesterday.

A short Strip

This was an area of grass and weeds, that leads up into the field. It had to be rotovated two years ago, after a vehicle left ruts in the surface.  It measures 40m by 5 m, which is 1/20th of an acre, and took just under an hour to mow. That’s pretty slow, but with two fence lines to trim as well not too bad. A wider strip would be relatively quicker to mow, as it’s the trimming around the edges which takes the time, not cutting a full swath. I used a 60cm Hahnsense blade (Stone point) for the first time. It was fine.

The next picture shows how much grass you get left with, even on such a small area. As we no longer have sheep, the grass will be used for mulching where I am going to be planting trees this Autumn/Winter.

Mown Grass

The chickens in the picture have subsequently spread the grass out again.

Not having to make hay means that I can cut whenever I feel like it, rather than waiting for a period of decent weather.

Take Care

Deano

Scythe Care – New Blade Preparation

Hi All

Just like the snath, there are things that we need to do to the blade before we can use it. The blades come ‘ready to mow’ from the factory, at least that’s what they say. Here’s what you need to do to get your blade ready.

At the factory, the blades are peened by machine. If they were sent out without anything else being done to them, the blades would really be ready to mow with. Unfortunately, to make the blades look better, the edges are given a quick pass over a grindstone to make them look neater. This means that you will need to peen the blade. They’re also covered with paint, lacquer, and labels. These need to be removed.

Scythe Blade preparation

If you look at the picture to the right, you’ll see four white labels.

The bottom label is pointing towards the beard. On some blades, the end of the cutting edge protrudes slightly. Whilst mowing, this protrusion catches bits of cut grass, dragging them back to the right as the blade is brought back for the next cutting stroke. To stop this occurring, the corner is rounded off with a metal file. This blade shows the shape that it should be.

The next label up points along the cutting edge. The lacquer needs to be removed from both sides of the cutting edge, otherwise it will clog up your scythe stone, whilst sharpening. The simplest way to do it is simply to rub it off with an abrasive pad. You can use a paint stripper, like Nitromors, but it’s not a very pleasant substance to work with. Cleaning a strip about a centimetre in width would be enough. I prefer to remove it all.

The next white label up is sitting on a factory applied sticker, and pointing to two others. Peel these off.

The top label is laid along the rib which runs the full length of the scythe blade. This one is painted gold. The paint needs to be removed, otherweise the paint will clog up your scythe stone. The rib is used as a guide to get the angle of the scythe stone right for sharpening, so the stone rubs against it. I ruined an excellent fine stone the only time that I left the paint on.

Once these jobs have been done the blade is ready for peening. I’ll discuss peening in another article, but it’s something that you need to see demonstrated, to really understand how its done.

In an earlier post I mentioned a large blade that I was going to get ready for the Scything festival, well here it is, laid above two 60cm grass blades. I cleaned it up this morning, and will start peening it shortly. The bottom blade is my general purpose, do everything blade. This morning it cut weeds, another day it will do grass. There is a short article about it on my Sustainable Smallholding blog

Sustainable Smallholding

If you compare the colour of it with the middle one, you will see how little paint is left on it, and that all of the lacquer has gone.

Take Care

Deano

Scythe Care – The Snath

Most people who buy a scythe, put it straight together, and give it a try. A little time spent taking care of the snath first, will pay dividends in the long run. If you just use the snath straight out of the box, you end up with a dirty, dull grey length of wood. Why spend so much time looking after the blade, and ignore the snath.

The first thing to do is to make sure that your hands are clean when you handle the snath, at least until it has been treated. If you put stains on the snath now, you’ll either need to sand them out, or they will stay forever. Here is a picture of a brand new snath, bought to use on my scything courses.

New Scythe Snath

I’m going to treat it with raw linseed oil. Mike Zair, who helps Simon Fairlie at the Scythe Shop, uses a little rhyme to tell people how often to oil the Snath:

Once a day for a week.

Once a week for a month.

Once a month for a year.

Once a year for life.

It makes sense, as when you first use the oil it soaks in easily, but as more oil is applied, it starts to take longer. I tend to keep oiling the snath  as soon as the previous coat has dried. Today I got a three coats on.

As the bottom of the scythe gets exposed to the most moisture, and has exposed end grain, I stand the snath in a container, and pour the linseed oil in. This allows the end to soak in linseed oil until it is saturated. I also put the handles into the container, as they get a lot of muck, and in my case blood, on them. (I really should concentrate more). having applied the first coat, I just leave to dry, and keep repeating, until the snath starts to change colour.

Snath and handles in container

That depends on the oil, but it’s normally after less than a week. From then on in I start to use the snath, but keep on applying oil on a regular basis for the whole of the first mowing season, with a final coat before hanging the snath up for the Winter. Before I start to mow in the Spring, I give the snath one coat.

The third picture shows my existing snath getting it’s Spring coat of oil. I’ve set it next to the new one, so that you can get an idea of how dark, and attractive it looks. If you go along to the Scything Festival, and compare it to the other snaths, you’ll see how much better it looks. It should last a lot longer too. It doesn’t take a lot of time to do, but I hope that you’d agree that the result is much more attractive. The new snath had already had two coats of oil when this picture was taken.

My old snath had a little Turpentine mixed into the Linseed Oil, which looked, and smelled, great. The next snath that I treated ended up too sticky, as I used too much turpentine, so now I’m using plain Linseed Oil, as the results are more predictable.

The snaths are leaning against a Modified Commercial beehive, with the roof of a Warre hive sat on top. I was oiling the Warre roof at the same time. If you’re interested in posts about beekeeping, I have some on my other blog, The Sustainable Smallholding, which can be found

HERE

My next scything post will be on preparing a new blade.

Take Care

Deano

Scythe for Hire (or Barter)

Have Scythe, will mow.

A friend, who reads this blog occasionally (Hi Patrick), has some egg laying ducks for sale. I’d like some, but as usual, I’m short of cash. Patrick has an area of orchard/trees/scrub, which is overgrown, in which his chickens roam. He suggested that I might like to do some scything, in exchange for some ducks. I went along to take a look, and at first glance thought that there wasn’t enough there to make it a fair exchange. On closer examination, there was 1/2 an acre, including brambles, small ash seedlings, and some tussocky grass, which he wants to keep as shelter for his chickens. It also turns out that Wendy had borrowed a scythe from another friend, and smallholder, and had cleared some weeds with ease.

Negotiations were quick. I said that it would take me a day’s scything, and that I’d be happy to do it for six ducklings. He said that it wasn’t enough for my time, I said that I’m happy with six, and the deal was done.

So, I’m going to spend a day scything, with friends, and in return I get six ducks, a meal, and copious cups of tea. I would have done it for less, and he would have given more. Everybody is happy.

Life doesn’t have to be difficult, or all about money.

Take Care

Deano

Haymaking With a Scythe

A while ago, I was asked to write an article about haymaking with a scythe for the Downsizer site. You can access the Downsizer forums through the link in the Blogroll.  The article didn’t appear for a while, but I found it today. Gil, who is another scything afficianado, has added photographs, and a comment, to the article. You can read the article

HERE

Little has changed since I wrote the article, except that now I no longer need to make hay. Please feel free to read the article, and then if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Take Care

Deano

Scything Soon

Wandering up in the fields today, I noticed that there is new grass growing, and clover pushing through. Around the outside of the vegetable beds, the weeds are really pushing ahead. It all means that soon it will be time to get the Scythe back out again.

I decided to give myself a short break from my normal chores, to have a quick look at my scythe blades. I used WD40 on them the first year, and by the end of Winter, they had developed some rust, which is damaging to the blade. Since then I’ve used engine oil, or mineral oil, and both have worked well. I’d like to try a vegetable oil to see if it would be as effective.

It’s also time to put a coat of linseed oil onto my snaths (scythe handles). In the first year they needed regular applications, but now once a year is sufficient. That will be done later this week. I think that we are due heavy rain at the weekend, so that’s a good opportunity to do some indoor work.

I also need to reshape the head of a peening anvil. It was sent over to me by friends in France, after I described how my son had lost mine. The peening anvils sold by the Scythe Shop, are set up in blocks of wood. A bit inconvenient for traveling. In France I had discovered an old peening anvil with a spike, which is stuck into the ground before use. A much more sensible idea. The replacement anvil will need careful grinding to give it the right profile, and then smoothed and polished to avoid leaving marks on the surface. These marks would be transferred to the surface of the blade during peening (first stage of sharpening).

I also have a new blade to prepare, and try out. It was sent over especially for my by Gerhard Wagner, who worked at the Schrockenfux factory where the blades are made. We had discussed blade patterns at the 2008 Festival, and I had said that I was looking for a blade with a really wide beard, that’s the end closest to the snath. he sent me a monster. I’ll post a photo later. The reason for the wide beard is that it could allow a deeper cut with each stroke of the scythe. My motives are not pure in this. Last year I was the third fastest mower in the competition. (The published results are wrong, Ray’s time was 3.40 something,  not 2.40 something. I know, because I was timing him, and cheered when he went past my time. Sorry Ray). Of the two mowers faster than me, Simon is a competitive canoeist, and therefore fit with good upper body strength, and Phil is just good with a scythe, vastly better than the previous year. I don’t expect to beat either of them, but the new blade might be enough to stop anybody else from getting catching up. Maybe not though. It will still be nice to try out a different pattern blade, although my place is starting to like like a museum of scythe blades.

Cheers

Deano

Scything Course Details

Hi All

I’ve published details of the courses that I’ll be running this year on a page entitled ‘Scything courses’, which you can find on a tab alongside the home page. please fell free to take a look.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you on a course this year.

G

Blade Pictures

As promised here are some pictures of different types of blade. The first is of all of the blades mentioned in the previous post, except for the Hahnsense, which I don’t use.

oriental, rasierschnitt, ditching, and bush blades

The second is a comparison of the ditching and bush blades. Note that the point on the Ditching blade (top), is similar to that on the Hahnsense.

Ditching and Bush blades