Who else uses a scythe?

[FortyTwoBlades]

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?

Ash. Seymour Midwest assembles them wrong and with uneven roundness/taper, so I have a special arrangement with them where I buy the steam bent blanks and finish/assemble them myself.

 

[phantomknives]

almost time to break'm out again guys

 

[calinb]

Welcome to the forum! My personal take on the questions:

1) You're not likely to be able to get the Arti blades to fit Seymour snaths without modifying the heel plate on the snath, and even then, I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure the tangs are too short to reach the holes in the heel plate even at maximum depth.
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Thanks for your help, as always, Benjamin, but I figured you mostly work with the smaller diameter #1 and #8 snaths and it would be worth a try (given that I'd already ordered the blades). When I first put the blades up to the loop bolt and hafting collar, I knew I could make it work!

So I'm now making good progress on my "American Detente" scythe (Seymour #9 snath with Russian Arti and Saiga blades). The four Russian blades I ordered on Ebay arrived and it didn't take very long to get a good fit of the first blade on my #9 snath. I don't know about the Seymour #1 or #8 snaths, which probably use a smaller loop bolt and hafting collar / heel plate, but only a small amount of tang grinding was necessary to get a good fit using any of the three knob anchor holes in my #9 heel plate.

After grinding the tang, I used a couple of propane torches with a potato and wet T-shirt to protect the steel temper beyond the tang region and I reduced the tang steepness from approximately 24 degrees to 12 degrees. After the rain showers stop, I'll give it a whirl but I don't think I'll need to bend the tang further, because there's easily enough room for fine adjustments (up to ~10 degree more steepness reduction) by inserting an aluminum or hardwood wedge between the tang and the belt loop. After adjusting the tang steepness, the tang "sideways tilt", which affects the horizontal balance of the scythe, was also reduced. I could easily recover the tilt alone with another heating of the tang, but I think the reduction in tilt results in a near perfect fit with my #9 snath so I'm leaving it for now.

The scythe weighs 1720 g / 3.78 lbs total with this 66 cm Russian Saiga blade.

A little grinding to narrow the tang in places...

plus a little grinding on the knob.

I have a second 66 cm blade, a 100 cm blade, and a 40 cm bush blade.

I used a strap wrench (and a little heat from a heat gun on one of the nib bands) to remove the too-tight nibs and then I enlarged and trued (rounded) the nib bands on a mandrel that I made by setting my lathe compound to 2 degrees and cutting a taper on a galvanized pipe "nipple."

Next step: turning an oak dowel to cut, splice, and lengthen my snath to perfectly fit my 6'-1" plus height.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Best of luck with the whole endeavor, though I can't say as it's the way I'd go about it. You may find that on an American snath the toe of those blades will want to trail instead of cut if in the neutral or closed positions, so you'll probably want to hang it open. Seymour uses the same loop bolt for all three snath models, though the spacing between the loop bolt slot in the collar and the wells of the heel plate are just a little different with each. The folks at Arti are actually making pretty decent progress experimenting with forging an American-style cross section now, though I don't expect that they'll be ready for production until next season.

Nice work with the DIY mandrel!

 

[calinb]

Best of luck with the whole endeavor, though I can't say as it's the way I'd go about it. You may find that on an American snath the toe of those blades will want to trail instead of cut if in the neutral or closed positions, so you'll probably want to hang it open. Seymour uses the same loop bolt for all three snath models, though the spacing between the loop bolt slot in the collar and the wells of the heel plate are just a little different with each. The folks at Arti are actually making pretty decent progress experimenting with forging an American-style cross section now, though I don't expect that they'll be ready for production until next season.

Nice work with the DIY mandrel!

Thanks for your reply, FortyTwoBlades!

Yes. I agree that the blade might be too closed (well closed from "circular" with the knob in the middle well). It depends on where I measure or from which point on the snath I pivot the blade to sweep the blade against the wall to compare the beard and toe passing points.

I've been cutting some weeds and grass with it and I think it will work well in the most open position but it's hard to tell because I don't have a proper scythe stone or peening avil yet. I'm still hoping to buy them from you when they come back into stock. I do have some other stones and my new fancy water-cooled Grizzly grinder however so maybe I'll see what I can do with them.

I'll be very interested in those Russian blades when you receive them!

Yeah--the mandrel I made won't last as long as a blacksmith anvil but it was sure a lot cheaper and I'll probably never wear it out!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

A more right-handed pivot will help open the presentation of the blade. Your height doesn't help with this, either--the further from the blade the pivot is the more effectively closed the blade presentation becomes!

Start with grinding the blade and take it from there. The Russian blades don't need peening so much as softer blades do, so omitting the step for now isn't a huge deal. Botan at One Scythe Revolution has the peening supplies in stock, I believe, and he carries my scythe stones, as well.

The mandrel will do well enough, I expect! You won't need to use it often, so it'll probably last long enough!

 

[calinb]

A more right-handed pivot will help open the presentation of the blade. Your height doesn't help with this, either--the further from the blade the pivot is the more effectively closed the blade presentation becomes!

Yes--I can see this in my mind's eye with a thought experiment visualizing an extreme pivot case. I have the nibs "maxed out", because of my height and it's not helping! Lengthening the lower straight section of the snath will allow me to lower the nibs on the snath, moving the pivot closer to the blade's heel and more like the geometry of a straight snath, which should result in some improvement. I'm pretty sure I'll still be using the most open well position for the tang knob though.

Start with grinding the blade and take it from there. The Russian blades don't need peening so much as softer blades do, so omitting the step for now isn't a huge deal. Botan at One Scythe Revolution has the peening supplies in stock, I believe, and he carries my scythe stones, as well.

I'll start with the water grinder. Just about any honing that can be done with a stone can also be done with the right grit of wet or dry sand paper wrapped around a backing object of an appropriate shape too. Finally, stropping sticks are always easy to acquire too.

Thanks for referring me to Botan but I'd like to send the business your way, when possible, and one-stop shopping saves me money on shipping too. Also, like you've stated, you don't run sales and promotional pricing specials but your prices are lower than pretty much everywhere else on a daily basis. I appreciate the good values you consistently offer!

The mandrel will do well enough, I expect! You won't need to use it often, so it'll probably last long enough!

I have to report that it did work very well and very quickly by supporting the band edges in a vice and using only a few taps round and round the opposite edge of the mandrel with a cross peen hammer! Though still a quick machine setup and job, it took much longer to turn the tool on my lathe than it took to adjust four nib bands!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

Lengthening the snath won't reduce how far your ergonomic placement of the nibs is from the blade, and--if anything--will lengthen it. Think in regards to the plane of the cut. That's the distance that matters. Vertical axis placement is meaningless in this context.

I need to take a better video of my nib-sizing process this summer. The one that I originally did was using pretty light blows using a ball-pein hammer, as I figured more folks would have one kicking around vs. a cross pein, but that's not necessarily true, plus I'm still using a specialty anvil that basically no one is gonna' have just sitting around anyhow, so I might as well show my really process with full-force blows. When things go right it takes less than 2 minutes from start to finish to size a nib right. I even have a new (to me) vintage long-angle chisel punch of sorts that does a better job of opening up the top of the loop so it has room to cinch when tightened. It's like a cold chisel without any edge on it and the face bevels behind where the edge would be if there was one is a long, narrow wedge instead of the chunky short one on cold chisels. It allows it to slide into the top of the loop easier and not get popped back out during blows to the nib iron and the top of the loop to properly orient the threaded portion with the loop itself. I can make blows right on top of the wedge portion, in fact, which is really handy during that stage.

 

[calinb]

Lengthening the snath won't reduce how far your ergonomic placement of the nibs is from the blade, and--if anything--will lengthen it. Think in regards to the plane of the cut. That's the distance that matters. Vertical axis placement is meaningless in this context.

Agreed. The vertical axis placement is meaningless here, but the snath curves in both horizontal and vertical planes. It's the horizontal component of the curve that's important here. Without fetching my snath from the barn tonight, I can't say that moving the nibs down would "incur" into the horizontal component of the curve and bring the pivot position more "square", as it would be with a straight snath. Relying only on my memory of the snath's shape, I now tend to think that it would not.

The snath is nearly straight and square in the horizontal plane below the "knee bend". If this section were to be extended to infinite length, the snath would have the same effective hafting angle as a straight snath. (The curved snath approaches the geometry of a straight snath as the length of the lower straight section approaches infinity.) So increasing the length of this section to infinity would help! However, increasing the length there by a few inches does not change the effective hafting angle significantly.

So ATM, I don't think that moving the nibs on the snath after lengthening it will make much difference.

I need to take a better video of my nib-sizing process this summer. The one that I originally did was using pretty light blows using a ball-pein hammer, as I figured more folks would have one kicking around vs. a cross pein, but that's not necessarily true, plus I'm still using a specialty anvil that basically no one is gonna' have just sitting around anyhow, so I might as well show my really process with full-force blows. When things go right it takes less than 2 minutes from start to finish to size a nib right.

I actually used the "normal" hammer face of my cross peen hammer to tap the mandrel on the edge opposite the nib band. I inserted the mandrel into the nib band and supported the band on the edges of open bench vice jaws. I adjusted the jaws with a little clearance with the mandrel to permit tapping the mandrel downwards between the jaws, but the jaws were set close enough to support the round section of the nib band. I tapped the edge round and round, forcing the mandrel into the nib. Tapping the edge of the mandrel was far easier than fixing the mandrel to something and trying to "catch" the nib band using any punch that I posses. It only took a few seconds of moderate tapping with my 500 gram hammer.

I even have a new (to me) vintage long-angle chisel punch of sorts that does a better job of opening up the top of the loop so it has room to cinch when tightened. It's like a cold chisel without any edge on it and the face bevels behind where the edge would be if there was one is a long, narrow wedge instead of the chunky short one on cold chisels. It allows it to slide into the top of the loop easier and not get popped back out during blows to the nib iron and the top of the loop to properly orient the threaded portion with the loop itself. I can make blows right on top of the wedge portion, in fact, which is really handy during that stage.

That sounds like a very useful punch for this task!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

The issue is that the optimum ergonomic nib positions are dictated by your body's measurements, so unless you get shorter you're not gonna' be changing your blade presentation much, since you're going from measurements that are currently too short to using ones of the proper length. Since those are longer, it's gonna' close the presentation during the stroke due to the pivot distance lengthening rather than shortening.

I should specify that when I adjust nib bands I actually "start from scratch". The nib irons I buy are completely un-shaped, and I use the same size for both upper and lower nibs, and just size them appropriately. That involves a bit more than a simple truing job on an iron that's already near-net shape. I set the loop on the cutting shelf of my regular anvil to use the internal corner to prevent it jumping around, and use a cross pein to hammer the shoulders roughly in to approximate size, true up the shape on the horn of my blowhorn anvil and hammer the shoulders in tighter against the horn, then check my sizing against a set of calipers to see if I need to go smaller or bigger to hit my target. Then after either hammering the shoulders to close it more or tapping it down the horn to spread it and re-tightening the shoulders, I make sure my diameter is a touch smaller than my target before using the wedge punch to open the top of the loop, which brings me up to my desired diameter. Then I give a few taps to align the nib iron's rod with the loop as it should be.

 

[calinb]

I should specify that when I adjust nib bands I actually "start from scratch".

It's nice that you've acquired both the tool set and skill set to optimize this task. The closer you can adjust the nibs to optimum, the better they hold with less tightening torque, for sure!

My nibs are probably not adjusted optimally, but at least they hold well without the need to crank them down to the point that one of them was denting the tube (as delivered by Seymour Midwest). When loosened, they now slide on the aluminum fairly easily without digging-in and making big scratches and gouges on the aluminum too.

I can really see how your are working cheap (you mentioned less than minimum wage) when you do this Seymour snath adjusting stuff on your #1 and #8 snaths--especially with all the work you've described for the #1 snath parts you buy.

 

[calinb]

It stopped raining so I went out to the barn to play with my scythe project. I remembered the hafting angle differences backwards; the Russian Arti/Saiga blade that I've been fitting to my #9 snath has a significantly more open hafting angle than the modern Seymour blade has out of the box (OOB). I think the Russian blade should work well with my adjustments but it will still be possible to make some smaller tweaks in its tang orientation, if necessary

Both tang knobs are in the middle adjustment well here. My fitted Russian blade hafting angle is significantly more open (close to circular) than the OOB Seymour blade.

Next is the most open blade tang knob position. The Russian blade exhibits 1+ inches of open arc at the toe with the pivot point resulting from FortyTwoBlades nib position recommendation for tall mowers. The upper nib is positioned nearly as high as possible (leaving just a little "shelf" for the heel of my hand) to make the snath work okay for my height.

My adjusted Russian blade tang results in a little less lift in the lay of its blade than the Seymour blade exhibits OOB, which is a good thing for my height. Unlike the Russian blade, where I reduced the tang angle, I'll probably need to heat the Seymour tang and bend it to increase its tang angle, because it has very little tang angle out of the box. BTW, the two outermost Sharpie lines on the one snath delimit the straight section of tubing that will eventually contain an oak dowel splice to lengthen the snath. The center line is the cut line. I'll leave one snath unmodified in length for my wife.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

It stopped raining so I went out to the barn to play with my scythe project. I remembered the hafting angle differences backwards; the Russian Arti/Saiga blade that I've been fitting to my #9 snath has a significantly more open hafting angle than the modern Seymour blade has out of the box (OOB). I think the Russian blade should work well with my adjustments but it will still be possible to make some smaller tweaks in its tang orientation, if necessary

Both tang knobs are in the middle adjustment well here. My fitted Russian blade hafting angle is significantly more open (close to circular) than the OOB Seymour blade.

Next is the most open blade tang knob position. The Russian blade exhibits 1+ inches of open arc at the toe with the pivot point resulting from FortyTwoBlades nib position recommendation for tall mowers. The upper nib is positioned nearly as high as possible (leaving just a little "shelf" for the heel of my hand) to make the snath work okay for my height.

My adjusted Russian blade tang results in a little less lift in the lay of its blade than the Seymour blade exhibits OOB, which is a good thing for my height. Unlike the Russian blade, where I reduced the tang angle, I'll probably need to heat the Seymour tang and bend it to increase its tang angle, because it has very little tang angle out of the box. BTW, the two outermost Sharpie lines on the one snath delimit the straight section of tubing that will eventually contain an oak dowel splice to lengthen the snath. The center line is the cut line. I'll leave one snath unmodified in length for my wife.

The factory tang angle on American blades is dead flat, as heating and bending them is at least supposed to be standard practice. The tangent of the curve at the toe is what's most important when it comes to ensuring your blade isn't trailing. The Russian blades have something of a hooked toe to them, which is why you need to hang them so open on an American snath. You can see in your overlaid snath photos that the two blades have the edges roughly parallel to one another at the toe, despite the rest of the blade being substantially different. You can almost think of the Russian blade as having a REALLY big beard.

 

[calinb]

The factory tang angle on American blades is dead flat, as heating and bending them is at least supposed to be standard practice. The tangent of the curve at the toe is what's most important when it comes to ensuring your blade isn't trailing. The Russian blades have something of a hooked toe to them, which is why you need to hang them so open on an American snath. You can see in your overlaid snath photos that the two blades have the edges roughly parallel to one another at the toe, despite the rest of the blade being substantially different. You can almost think of the Russian blade as having a REALLY big beard.

Yes--I noticed that the edge angles nearly match at the toe. Thanks!

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

In the case of the hook-nosed blades you end up with a proportionally small amount of slicing action and a lot of chopping action, while I prefer a heavy emphasis on the slice along the most distal 2/3 of the blade and the chopping clinch delivered only at the most proximal 1/3 at the heel. If you then want it more choppy you just hang it more open, but in general I find that placing heavy emphasis on the slice gives greatest overall satisfaction.

 

[calinb]

Latest update: Profiling and sharpening my Seymour blade.

While waiting for the grass to grow, I continue to work on my scythe hardware. I got out my new Grizzly Anniversary wet grinder for the first time and worked on the new (modern production "quality") Seymour blade. Whereas the Arti blades are nearly "ready to mow", the new Seymour blade needed a lot of profiling--particularly toward the toe where it is very thick (even in the bevel area).

My new Grizzly wet grinder worked great, except I don't think the stone wheel is going to last very long, if I do many of these profiling jobs with it! Now I highly suspect that the Baryonyx Knive Co. Grinding Point For American Scythes product is the better way to go, when there's profiling required--for economy, if nothing else! I'll be ordering a point from FortyTwoBlades to save wear and tear on my Grizzly wheel, for sure.

When it comes time to replace my Grizzly wheel, I could go with the standard Tormek wheel for 3x the price of a replacement Grizzly stone, but online reports indicate that neither of these aluminum oxide stones actually lasts longer than the other one. There's also a Tormek Blackstone, which probably won't last any longer than the standard wheel on a scythe blade, and the much more expensive diamond wheel, which has been dinged for rapid wear in reviews too.

My wheel is 10" dia. x 2" wide with a 12 mm hole (same as the large Tormek models). Looking down the road, I could buy an entire Angelo B. Manual Grinding Wheel setup from Baryonyx for the price of a standard Tormek wheel! I would fit the larger diameter A.B. wheel on my Grizzly (the larger wheel diameter will still fit the Grizzly) and save the rest of the A.B. hardware for making a treadle powered grinder someday.

What's the shaft hole diameter on your A.B. wheel, FortyTwoBlades? If it's too large, I can make an adapter bushing for use on my Grizzly.

BTW, I'm completely happy with the Grizzly. The wheel runs very true (particularly in roundness, which is what matters the most, if you don't want to do a lot of pre-use wheel dressing). The finish on the machine is also quite nice. I ordered some WEN (another Tormek clone) jigs from Amazon because they were cheap. Unless you're buying the uber-expensive Tormek jigs, I don't think it matters much (doesn't matter seem to matter where in China they come from). In general, I can make my own quality jigs when I need them and I just free-hand the scythe blade.

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

The hole on the Angelo B. grinding wheels is a hair under 14mm but I wouldn't be able to give an accurate measurement without disassembling one.

Doing the initial bevel setting is always the most labor-intensive part of things. Once it's set properly, future maintenance grinding is fast.

 

[calinb]

The hole on the Angelo B. grinding wheels is a hair under 14mm but I wouldn't be able to give an accurate measurement without disassembling one.

Thanks for your prompt reply, FortyTwoBlades, and there's certainly no need for a more accurate measurement. I'm sure I can bush it up a little and bushing it up is easier than chucking up some kind of diamond hone to enlarge it and trying to keep it round. Sadly, my lathe isn't anywhere near big enough to set it up for that!

Doing the initial bevel setting is always the most labor-intensive part of things. Once it's set properly, future maintenance grinding is fast.

Make sense. Thanks. Even though the wet grinder will be great for maintenance, I'll still be getting a grinding point from you for any future "heavy lifting" (like damage removal, maybe).

 

[FortyTwoBlades]

I use by belt grinder's contact wheel to do that work these days, but because of the speed and the potential for burning an edge that thin, it's not a technique I'd suggest people start with. You can muck up a blade fast that way! But I have the right belts and know what I'm doing. A 36 grit belt makes quick work of hogging off the excess metal from an old worn-down blade or a new blade alike. I'll need to end up taking some video showing how I grind without a roller guide, at a slant to the wheel. Makes it easy to hold a pretty consistent, low angle.

 

[A17]

I was gifted a brush blade and collar that have gone through a fire and I'm wondering, are they junk? Can the blade be re-tempered? If so, is it hard to do? Does the hardware have to be tempered? Am I bugging you too much?