Who else uses a scythe?

[FortyTwoBlades]

Thank you and thanks for your prompt reply too, Benjamin!



I noticed the shortness, but didn't figure out the reason for it. Makes sense. Thanks for the education. I figured I'd at least need to mill or drill a new hole in the heel plate or perhaps I could "hook" the tang knob off the edge of the heel plate and get the correct hafting angle. If anything, it looks like the ARTI tang heel set is too much of a half mulay geometry for the Seymour heel plate too, so the nib might need to be located off the edge of a standard Seymour heel plate or a wider heel plate might be fitted with a nib hole farther to the right (when viewed from the position the scythe is held or "presented", to use a firearms term). Sadly, as you point out, the ARTI tang might be too short to work with the Seymour heel plate regardless.

BTW, scythe nomenclature is still not second nature to me and I incorrectly referred to the hafting angle as a function of the lower end slope of the snath shaft. Rather, it's the correct lay of the blade that depends on getting the angle of that lowest snath shaft section correct (an angle that's dependent on both shaft bend and user physiology), given the tang angle. On the other hand, hafting angle is of course affected by the blade's heel set.

Your best course of action under those circumstances (making it work rather than using different hardware or a different blade) would be to cut new holes in the plate. You'd need to make them rectangular to accept the shape of the knob (really more of a tab in the case of Arti blades.) Nibs are the adjustable side grips of the snath, not a part of the blade. The lay of the blade is a combination of the curvature in the neck of the snath, your dimensions and how you've positioned the lower nib, your stance, and the angle of the tang, among other factors (like the slope of the ground.) The set of the heel impacts the hang of the blade (the "yaw" in aeronautical terms) but it's uncommon to find heel sets other than square on blades that aren't meant for grain cradles.

Yes--I love your North Star ring and heel plate but probably won't order them at this time, because it seems that you plan to provide them with your Longfellow snath soon, which is of keen interest to me.

Yes, we're just waiting for our machine shop contractor to get their new plasma cutting table so we can offer the parts at a much better price than when they were water jet cut. They should have it before Spring, though they're still waiting on it.

Thanks for your assessment. You are probably right. If the fit is still not going to be ideal for this 6'-1" soon-to-be mower after bending a Seymour snath in a homemade pipe bender, I might as well start with raw tubing and just bend the whole thing!

In addition to the Longfellow I'm hoping to be able to offer big-n'-tall sizing in a more traditional two-nib American snath, but it won't be until after we're able to have a standard sized one done up. Our steam bender has a rather rare snath from my personal collection at the moment that I'm having them copy the lovely curves from. They'll be making the bending forms such that they'll be able to scale the form up or down.

If I don't end up buying the Grizzly wet grinder, what's your advice about using your BYXCO "Manticore" Abrasive File for the initial thinning of ARTI blades?

I'd suggest one of our grinding points instead. You just chuck it up in an electric hand drill and use it at an angle just a touch above flat and it'll grind a nice low bevel without running into clearance issues. It'll be much more pleasant, trust me.

Great! I think it will be a simple matter to make clamps to hang bolts with rollers on them from the existing guides--much like what you did with your grinder from below. (There's no underlying structure outboard of the grinding wheel on the Grizzly Anniversary grinder I'm considering though, so only a single guide could sprout vertically from the grinder chassis itself or its guide fittings.) I think the guide rollers could most easily come down from above, or more easily down at an angle off the existing guide structure. On the other hand, I think it's preferable to have vertical roller guides, as you have done. It helps when eyeballing the grind angle. The eye (brain) tends to know where level and vertical are located.

I don't even use roller guides at this point and just grind at a 45° slant to the wheel, as was one recommended historical practice. But they're handy for folks getting used to using a wheel. It's not the same as using other abrasive methods and takes a bit of getting used to. At least with wet grinders they're pretty slow so you aren't likely to outright ruin a blade without getting plenty of visual warning first.

I'm now thinking that I should take a walk or two and look for some vine maple wildwood that I can play with while I wait for you to complete the Longfellow snath project. I can try to find wildwood of a suitable diameter with the bark. In my experience it takes about a year of drying to avoid checkering and I don't want to wait a year, but any debarked areas can be painted with wood glue to greatly reduce the chances of checkering. I know this from slingshot and longbow fabrication. I'm sure someone somewhere has made a snath from vine maple. Vine maple is very curvy and small in diameter. It seldom grows higher than about 20' tall. It has become a very popular wood for longbow making and, everything considered, many bowyers consider it to be the equal of Pacific or European yew, though it is worked quite differently. All maple species have roughly the same density, which is much lower than hickory, as I recall (which is a good thing for a snath).

In the meantime, a cut off piece of large pipe and a wooden wedge would work for affixing the blade if putting together a wildwood snath. It can just be difficult making a good one when you don't already have a strong understanding of how the different parts all need to sit in relation to one another.

 

[calinb]

Yes, we're just waiting for our machine shop contractor to get their new plasma cutting table so we can offer the parts at a much better price than when they were water jet cut. They should have it before Spring, though they're still waiting on it.

I might need to place an order for some other stuff before then. Do you expect to have any of the Rinaldi tall peening anvils available again anytime soon?

In addition to the Longfellow I'm hoping to be able to offer big-n'-tall sizing in a more traditional two-nib American snath, but it won't be until after we're able to have a standard sized one done up. Our steam bender has a rather rare snath from my personal collection at the moment that I'm having them copy the lovely curves from. They'll be making the bending forms such that they'll be able to scale the form up or down.

Being on the tall side, I've been thinking about a method to achieve two adjustments to a Seymour aluminum snath very simply and relatively easily. I think it would work to cut the shaft in the straight section of tubing just below the mower's knee level. A wood dowel could be turned to a tight fit inside the tubing and be used to extend the length of that section to best height adjustment effect. (Alternatively, the snath length could even be reduced here by removing and discarding a short segment of the aluminum tubing.) A second adjustment (which may or may not prove to be useful) could be realized by twisting the upper and lower snath segments relative to each other before locking the upper and lower segments back together.

Given the bends and geometry of the snath and mower "system", it looks to me like this is the best place to adjust for a mower's height. It might even be possible to drill a few holes in the dowel to enable user length adjustment positions by securing the upper and lower sections of the tubing to the dowel "splice" using through bolts. I'd probably be inclined to forgo the adjustment feature and just epoxy the dowel in place, once I'd decided on the desired length and angular positioning, but an adjustment feature here could easily be proven useful under some circumstances.

As always, thanks for your thoughts and the education, Benjamin!

-Cal

 

[calinb]

I'm making a second post here, because the forum would not let me edit the above one. (It thinks it's inappropriate or spam when I try to edit and include the following. Weird!

I'd suggest one of our grinding points instead. You just chuck it up in an electric hand drill and use it at an angle just a touch above flat and it'll grind a nice low bevel without running into clearance issues. It'll be much more pleasant, trust me.

The grinding points look like a very good solution, but I went ahead and ordered the Grizzly wet grinder. I have many tools that will benefit from the acquisition.

I don't even use roller guides at this point and just grind at a 45° slant to the wheel, as was one recommended historical practice. But they're handy for folks getting used to using a wheel. It's not the same as using other abrasive methods and takes a bit of getting used to. At least with wet grinders they're pretty slow so you aren't likely to outright ruin a blade without getting plenty of visual warning first.

Do you grind at 45 degrees to increase the radius of the hollow grind (flatten it a little)? Having some hollow does appear to be a benefit of the wet grinding wheel method, but I have no idea how much hollow is optimum.

Yeah--I just free-hand when I grind with the ubiquitous bench grinder! I've ground my own draw knife blades that way (for longbow projects) and I free-hand axes, machetes, lawnmower blades, etc. A bench grinder is really too fast and hot for many things though, as you say. I also free-hand lathe tool bits on a dry fine silicon carbide wheel (necessary for carbide) but it wears down much faster than an aluminum oxide wheel and the bits must be dipped in water very frequently. I can't wait for my new water cooled grinding wheel and think I'll first try free-hand scythe blades on it too, before considering any guides.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Sounds like you've mostly got things pretty well figured out at this point. The chief trouble you'll find with your proposed method is getting enough material into the tubing to keep force from mowing from deforming the tubing or the wood itself. You'll need at least a couple inches for there to be enough material to provide counter-leverage. A solid piece is one thing, but when you introduce splices into it, it starts getting a bit more finicky for the fit to be secure and durable. Additionally, the upper hand spacing starts becoming problematic as you scale. I do have some concepts for a fully scalable multi-part snath, but it's a work in progress and getting the parts made is...a challenge that will require some creative hurdling.

 

[calinb]

Sounds like you've mostly got things pretty well figured out at this point.

Thanks but I'm new to scythes and studying hard. I don't know that I've mostly got things figured out but I've figured out some things I wish to try, and that's good enough to have fun with it.

I agree that adjustability adds entirely new challenges. I didn't mention it but, besides simplicity and cleaner aesthetics, a primary reason for my intention to just epoxy the splice into place is it's mechanically superior to the fastener bolt method that enables adjustments. I'm very comfortable with 2" of engagement on each end of the dowel splice, if it's bonded in place with epoxy or other nearly incompressible adhesive. The epoxy not only produces a strong bond, but it rigidly fills any gaps between the wood splice and the tubing too. A good epoxy is plenty strong-witness the JB Weld results in this test where the JB Weld epoxy wasn't even optimally applied with regard to surface prep, application methods and such, in some of the trials:

I mostly include it here, because I found it to be amusing--especially the idea to test the use adhesive instead of head bolts in a small gasoline engine (no spoilers here )!

An aesthetic option would be to "clad" the epoxy-bonded wooden splice with matching tubing, if the right matching OD and ID tubing could be found or turned down from dimensionally close tubing. When done with care, no wood and barely any gap between the "clad" tubing and the snath tubing would be visible, but the work to realize this aesthetics-motivated option would likely far exceed the effort required to fit a merely functional wholly wooden splice!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

The chief issue is that we're also dealing with torque, not just flexing strain. It's going to be possible to put something together, but to me it's not just a matter of making the thing functional. I also like elegance through simplicity, and that's elusive in this case.

 

[Kevin Houtzager]

X

 

[calinb]

Ehr: Epoxy mechanically superiorcompaired to a mechanical fasterer? No it isn't, by quite a lot actually. As seen in the video I might add. As 42 said: It's the torque that is the issue. As in that lawnmower engine. The blade will just come flying of eventually.
<snip>

I believe that adhesives are mechanically superior to hardware fasteners in many applications. The reason they are superior in a joint like the one I describe in the scythe lengthening application is adhesives fill gaps and create large regions of nearly perfectly contacting support structure. Also, nearly non-compressible adhesives prevent the minuscule motions typical in the use of hardware fasteners that can create wear on surrounding materials and other performance problems. Several formulations of epoxy are almost universally used to bed firearms actions to stocks for these reasons. The manufacturing cost of bedding stocks is high so many new stock designs have been devised by firearms manufacturers to improve firearm accuracy, but to only partial success.

I see no need to get into stress, strain, torque, torsion, and other elements of a proper quantitative discussion here, which is not addressed merely by "torque that is the issue" anyway. I don't currently have access to finite element analysis FEA software so there's really no point in it (nor do I have the free time to attempt to model the problem I wish to solve anyway). Strength, however, can refer to a several different mechanical properties–tensile strength, yield strength, fatigue strength, compression strength, and impact strength, so "strength" is a difficult question to ponder and the pertinent concerns are different for every mechanical system.

I once owned an airplane with many exclusively adhesive-bonded aluminum stressed components. (The wing and fuselage skins were bonded to the wing ribs and fuselage bulkheads and runners.) This wasn't a little ultralight aircraft; it was a commercially produced aircraft subject to thorough FAA certification rules. It flew over 200 mph and, although some of the earlier versions of the fabrication technique required re-bonding within the fairly short order of a decade or so (due to manufacturing defects) the airplanes that were manufactured correctly are still flying--now something like 40 years after their manufacture. The wings have not fallen off or failed!

I found the lawn mower head in the video to be amusing, because a simple estimate of the tensile strength of the head to cylinder jug adhesive bond vs. the peak combustion chamber pressures would've raised a red flag. It was not a good application for those adhesives, but it was a great application for a YouTube video!

 

[Kevin Houtzager]

X

 

[calinb]

Airplanes: You do know that the body pannels aren't stressed in any way shape or form, do you? Its the frame that is stressed.

Stressed Skin: "Examples include nearly all modern all-metal airplanes,..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stressed_skin

I don't wish to take this thread any further off-topic so I'll limit my reply to this single case in point.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Well, an easy way to test your hypothesis is to go ahead and give it a try. I expect it will hold for at least some time, but I personally would be surprised if it never gave way on you in 4 seasons of moderate use.

 

[calinb]

Well, an easy way to test your hypothesis is to go ahead and give it a try. I expect it will hold for at least some time, but I personally would be surprised if it never gave way on you in 4 seasons of moderate use.

I agree. It may well give way eventually--just like epoxy axe heads eventually depart from their hafts (and epoxy joints don't exactly have a reputation for lasting "forever" in this application either). For the scythe lengthening, I think epoxy plus fastener hardware would be best, except for the unsightly protrusions the hardware brings.

Taking a cue from the rifle stock bedding model, epoxy might even improve the performance and longevity of even some adjustable scythe designs, if it could be used to increase contact area and fill gaps. As with rifle bedding, a good release agent must be employed correctly and, even then, parts can be @#l*%^!!! to separate!

Are you expecting any more Rinaldi tall peening anvils in the store any time soon? Thanks!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

I won't have more tall peening anvils coming in for about two months. I'd suggest checking with Botan at One Scythe Revolution and telling him I sent ya'.

 

[calinb]

I won't have more tall peening anvils coming in for about two months.

Maybe I can wait. You have other stuff I need (primarily several BYXCO stones) and I'm trying to save on shipping costs with a single order. Unlike a peening anvil, I can of course, buy stones just about anywhere, but your BYXCO stones look really good and I like the product line you are continuing to develop with them. I really like your entire store, actually!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

If you're in need of the canoe-shaped scythe stones, Botan carries the Manticore, Bull Thistle, and Arctic Fox ones.

 

[calinb]

If you're in need of the canoe-shaped scythe stones, Botan carries the Manticore, Bull Thistle, and Arctic Fox ones.

Yes! Not only does the shape work best for a scythe, but they provide an economical and versatile option to try them on many other blades too. My plan was to try the canoes first, and then order other shapes and sizes, depending on the results.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Yeah, he carries them. You should be able to get 'em all in one order from him.

 

[Kevin Houtzager]

X

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Sending a snath to a fellow in the UK. He wanted a bush snath for an English blade and couldn't find an appropriate snath locally.

 

[Yankee Josh]

Sending a snath to a fellow in the UK. He wanted a bush snath for an English blade and couldn't find an appropriate snath locally.

That's really beautiful 42! Almost a work of art! What kind of wood is that? I'm having a hard time guessing. Spruce or Pine?