Who else uses a scythe?

I give up, another not available result, but I just checked and as far as I can tell I wrote down the exact same listing as on the video. Sorry, John
 
[video=youtube;9HcpX7Ult9I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HcpX7Ult9I[/video]
 
Nice video on the Norwegian family making hay. Glad I asked and you went to trouble to find it, JAL.

The scythes they are using look a lot like what I've seen called colonial era scythes, with the short hockey stickish (not really, but that is what comes to mind) handle. Makes a lot of sense on the slopes they're cutting.

Talk about a lot of work for a little hay! I'll have to watch again once I start thinking my hay is hard work. I'm guessing it is a very small farm, maybe just one cow and horse. Too bad my Norwegian isn't good, probably missed a lot of details I would have enjoyed.
 
Those scythes are sort of a halfway between full sized scythes and long handled grass hooks. I've seen them used in a number of videos.
 
I thought bucking bales was hard work.
High line haying in Høymeising. I had to watch that twice.

Amazing videos, thank you guys!
 
garry3 said:
I thought bucking bales was hard work.
High line haying in Høymeising. I had to watch that twice.

Amazing videos, thank you guys!
Click to expand...

Bales are easy if you are young and strong; it was considered easy money compared to cutting tobacco :). Loose hay is more repetitive with lighter weight. Two different "workouts". Loose hay is actually fun. One of the neighbor boys volunteers to help many times when we are making hay. Of course we don't have to walk 1/2 mile up a cliff to cut!
 
BG-Farmer. Reference the step hill sided Norwegian Farm. My Mother and Father moved back to Ohio and later my Father made contact with a distant Norwegian cousin whose work brought him to the USA, and he often visited. On one trip he brought his Mother from Norway, and all four of them were driving to a nice place to eat, passing thru the well kept farms in that part of Ohio. Suddenly the woman from Norway started yelling "Stop the Car, Stop the Car". My Mother and Father thought she was having some kind of medical problem, but no, she just wanted to take some photos of farms that were flat as far as the eye could see, as no one back in Norway would believe her if she did not have photos to prove it. I myself have never used a scythe, I do have a True Temper hand operated, air cooled, weed washer. It looks something like a golf club, wooden handle, metal rod going down, makes a right angle to a duck bill shaped blade that is serrated on both edges. I used it this morning to knock down those dandelions that seem to spring up over night, as well as some other miscellaneous vegetation at the back of the yard. I do have a motor weed wackier, but for smaller jobs, prefer the non motorized version. John
 
A copy/paste of a new blog post called "So You Bought A Seymour No.1 Snath Off The Shelf…" detailing why I started buying No.1 snaths as parts from Seymour and putting them together myself:



So You Bought A Seymour No.1 Snath Off The Shelf…

You’ve discovered that it has a few significant problems with it, right? Chances are the taper is noticeably irregular, the neck is as thick as a baseball bat, and you can’t get the nibs to loosen up despite knowing that they’re a left-handed thread because they were cranked on too tight at the factory. But here’s the good news: all of those issues are fixable.

The irregular taper and thick neck of the snath can be fixed with a little time with a spoke shave and rasp, and the nibs can be loosened by using some rubber vise jaw pads to hold the grips of the nibs tightly without marring or cracking them and using the shaft of the snath for leverage to break them loose. There’s one major flaw, however, that’s not as easy to correct…the collar is installed a whopping 20° out of alignment, and when the loop bolt is perpendicular to the ground like it should be, the arch of the snath is pointing right towards you.

It’s not a perfect fix, but you can correct for this by introducing a twist to the tang of your blade much like is commonly seen on European pattern blades. Heat the shank of the tang in same manner you would if you were adjusting its pitch, but instead, lock the tang in a sturdy vise and pull on the blade while the shank is still at heat to introduce a matching 20° twist to the tang. This will correct for the crooked collar to bring the arch of the snath back to vertical. The downside of this is that when adjusting the hang of your blade you’ll now be pivoting the length of the blade along a path that resembles an inverted cone instead of in a nice flat circle like you would with a snath that had the collar correctly mounted, but it’ll at least keep the arch from striking you in the thighs and knees every time you take a stroke with the scythe!

A Seymour No.1 snath as currently assembled from the factory. The blade was bent to correct for the collar misalignment prior to the photo being taken.


End view showing the misalignment of the snath's arch when the collar runs parallel to the ground as intended.


View showing how the corrective bend of the blade's tang brings the arch of the snath back into correct alignment despite the crooked collar.
Click to expand...
 
42,
Mine seems fine, or at least much less severe...I think. Will try to get pictures, but may be several days. Did they make this change at some point recently? I've only had it for a few years, but no telling how long it was in the warehouse.

If you determine mine needs fixing, I'm pretty sure I can redo the snath, but if it gets messed up, I'll get one from you! I'm curious because I haven't had the problem of the snath hitting my thigh but want optimal configuration considering I use it daily, occasionally for several hours at a time! Seems identical to my sn9, though.
 
John Larsen,
I understand that story. For much the same reason, I can't drive worth a darn on straight, flat roads!

Get a scythe, maybe the SN8 and light weed blade. I think you'll like it!
 
BG_Farmer said:
42,
Mine seems fine, or at least much less severe...I think. Will try to get pictures, but may be several days. Did they make this change at some point recently? I've only had it for a few years, but no telling how long it was in the warehouse.

If you determine mine needs fixing, I'm pretty sure I can redo the snath, but if it gets messed up, I'll get one from you! I'm curious because I haven't had the problem of the snath hitting my thigh but want optimal configuration considering I use it daily, occasionally for several hours at a time! Seems identical to my sn9, though.
Click to expand...

The change occurred roughly in the late 80's to early 90's to the best of what I've been able to establish, and has been like that ever since. In use, the arch should either be dead vertical or slightly angled away from the user. This example wasn't an anomaly, and I've gotten remarks from a lot of folks, including some in the UK, that have observed this issue with the No.1 snaths. The No.8 and No.9 aluminums are fine, though.

BG_Farmer said:
John Larsen,
I understand that story. For much the same reason, I can't drive worth a darn on straight, flat roads!

Get a scythe, maybe the SN8 and light weed blade. I think you'll like it!
Click to expand...

Agreed. The No.8 aluminum snath and a light weed blade or grass blade make a great starting point for a number of reasons.
 
42,
You take a look, as I'm not sure. Hopefully, one or both of these pictures is enough
160427_0001.jpg


160427_0002.jpg


Here's the SN9
160427_0004.jpg


And, while I'm posting, something I've been wanting to put up. 3 stones from left to right: barely used Norton, a Lansky used ~2 years, and last a Norton used ~2years. They were all identical size initially. I'd say the used Norton is about done :).
160427_0003.jpg
 
The photos look like they aren't quite taken square with the reference points. The photos I took of the No.1 are first square with the end of the collar, and then lined up with the flat plane of the neck and arch before the lateral bend kicks in. With the aluminum models you could take the snath and push the neck end flat up against a wall and the collar will be in alignment. Do the same thing with the No.1 and your collar will be twisted out of line.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
The photos look like they aren't quite taken square with the reference points. The photos I took of the No.1 are first square with the end of the collar, and then lined up with the flat plane of the neck and arch before the lateral bend kicks in. With the aluminum models you could take the snath and push the neck end flat up against a wall and the collar will be in alignment. Do the same thing with the No.1 and your collar will be twisted out of line.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the pictures, it paused raining just before dark, so I got what I could.

I'm probably just dense, but I don't see the difference between the sn9 and sn1, aside from minor variation, such as the 9 has sharper bends and is shorter, the main reason I don't use it for grass and hay. I went back through the dark and rain to look again, and the differences are minor, to my eye lined up side by side.

I would not want the arch truly vertical/at right angle to ground, as that would change geometry to more like complex curved snath, rather than the complex-compound it is, like some European ones, which have a raised, tilted, and offset lower handle to compensate. Not sure how I could ever hit my thigh or knee the way it is set up! That said, I'm built like an ape and don't try to do a big twisting circle when I mow, so I'm probably not a typical user.

I guess I'll think on it some more. Right now, I can't fix until I know what's broken. I know you're probably right, but it may take some time to figure out how...
 
Here's a video demonstration of the issue I had done last spring. The No.1 snath I posted photos of above is in my father's possession (I gave it to him to use for weed removal along the sides of cross country running trails--he's a PE teacher) so I couldn't use the actual example in the video and had to mimic it by simple rotation of the nibs.

[video=youtube;WsOaUBsrS08]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsOaUBsrS08[/video]
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Here's a video demonstration of the issue I had done last spring. The No.1 snath I posted photos of above is in my father's possession (I gave it to him to use for weed removal along the sides of cross country running trails--he's a PE teacher) so I couldn't use the actual example in the video and had to mimic it by simple rotation of the nibs.

[video=youtube;WsOaUBsrS08]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsOaUBsrS08[/video]
Click to expand...

Ah. Light is starting to penetrate the fog. I now see what you mean by toward and away from the user. The way I mow, the only big effect is that the angle closes the hang a little. I tried your style in the video, and my back lasted about two days on uneven terrain in heavy grass and the windrows were often too heavy from the wide swath. I started watching the video of the two old guys mowing a meadow in Nova Scotia (https://youtu.be/no_M7Wubo1A) and do more or less what they do. Probably all wrong, definitely in the view of the Austrian scythe techniques all over YouTube, but it works in my conditions...and uses muscles and joints that are still working for me :).
 
Those ol' boys are mowing flattened grasses, and so that stroke works well for running the toe of the blade under the bent stalks. The method I show in the above video shouldn't be causing any issues for your back, but different strokes are used in different conditions, with the one I'm showing being for light growth where you're trying to take fairly large areas per swath. As the growth gets heavier, you either need to narrow the swath, shorten the stroke, or both in order to reduce the net resistance of the target material to what your comfortable strokes can easily handle without undue strain. You can see the difference in my stroke, for instance, in my goldenrod/burdock mowing video, where I'm limiting the depth of the swath and taking a more direct across-the-body stroke instead of the snath traversing an arc around my body.

[video=youtube;_AmYZkKSSYU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AmYZkKSSYU[/video]
 
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