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