Scythe-chete! An interesting corn knife.

[FortyTwoBlades]

H. S. Earle's patented corn knife, made by the North Wayne Tool Co. in their early days. The "female" face is dead flat while the bevel is ground wholly on "male" face with the raised side of the bead. One unit exhibits a crack in the edge and split handle while the other only has superficial chipping of the wood at the butt end.

This is the "later" second style rather than the one displayed in the patent documents.

 

[HwangJino]

Interesting.

I wonder what those grooves are for?

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Stiffening. The North Wayne Tool Co. was famous for their scythes, and this was an interesting application of elements of scythe blade design and construction being used outside the usual realm.

 

[mymindisamob]

Very cool. Much different than any corn knivess I have used.

 

[Square_peg]

Interesting tools.

That cracked one looks to have a bad heat treat.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

I don't think it was a bad heat treatment--I think it was abuse. It shows signs of having been flexed hard at that point, and they seem to have a fairly hard heat treatment, likely somewhere about 57 RC.

 

[Steve Tall]

A lot more graceful than the corn knives being sold these days.

 

[Liam Ryan]

Makes me wonder, how many broken scythes were re purposed into a usable blade like these?
Not much would end up on the junk pile back in the day, in most farms.

 

[hazy]

Interesting.

I wonder what those grooves are for?

High Fructose Corn Syrup? Ba-dum-tish

I'll show myself out.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Makes me wonder, how many broken scythes were re purposed into a usable blade like these?
Not much would end up on the junk pile back in the day, in most farms.

A lot. Here's a period publication with an article about repurposing old blades:

It was common to make harvesting knives out of them by cutting a section out of the web of the blade to make a tang of sorts, and then wrapping it with rags to make a handle. So common were these that some companies actually started making ready-made "rag knives" of more proper construction.

 

[saxon]

I had an uncle that lived in Escanaba MI, and he had a christmas tree farm. Everytime he came across a broken scythe blade he'd bring it home and attach it to a 3 or 4 ft pole and use it for shaping the trees in late summer so they'd get just the right amount of bright new growth for sale at Christmas time.