Here is the sentence you thought you’d never read on scytherspace: I’ve got myself a lawn mower.
This though, is no ordinary mower, it’s a Ransome’s Ajax push mower from the 1960’s with 12″ wide cutters, solid wood rollers and a heavy cast iron roller to the rear.
It has a steel grassbox, comes in gentlemanly green with racing stripes and is ‘by appointment to the Queen’! It needs a bit of tlc and it’s by no means a lightweight but it’s got heritage and was free so I’m not complaining.
So what do I want a mower for, no matter how sophisticated? Over the years of mowing, I’ve become increasingly interested in haymaking, traditional meadows and wild flowers. I’ve spent time in the mountains of Czech Republic and Transylvania making hay in flower-rich meadows, read about meadow management and discussed restoration projects with the North Pennines HayTime project. I discovered that Natural Enland has a ‘Wildflower meadow in your garden‘ booklet and started to learn about the cutting regime for traditional meadows. At the Somerset Scythe Festival last year, Dave Oxford gave a presentation on the new, lightweight breed of push mowers that are on the market and a project he did with them and Dorset council. I was impressed and immediately saw the potential in a scythe/ push mower combination for the ‘garden meadow’ idea.
To encourage wildflowers, the grass sward needs to be kept short in spring, traditionally by grazing with livestock. Around late May, the meadow is ‘shut up’ (the animals removed) and the grass allowed to grow until it’s harvested for hay in late July. In autumn, the ‘aftermath’ (grass regrowth) is again grazed off with the action of the beasts’ feet creating bare patches of soil for seed germination. Obviously, there’s no finer way to harvest your hay crop than by scythe but what about the spring and autumn short-cropping? Well, in skilled hands the scythe will cut this too. I well remember a group of National Trust wardens watching in amazement as my Oriental blade cropped the grass on their machine-cut lawn. For a lot of folk though, it can be frustrating and doesn’t give them the neat look they want. That’s where the mower comes in. Use it in the spring when you want a close shave lawn then sit back and watch the meadow grow until the end of summer when the scythe comes out for harvesting.
Of course, to have a flower-rich meadow where for years there was nothing but ryegrass and swingball takes a bit more effort than simply not cutting the grass so much. I’ve still a lot to learn myself so I’m continuing my studies and plan to organise some haymeadow training days in 2012. If you’re interested in these, please send me an email and subscribe to the blog to keep up to date with progress.
I was at Castle Drogo, a National Trust property in Devon where I was living at the time. After a fairly ordinary visit to the castle, I was amazed on walking into the cafe to see hand-made chairs at every table. Simple and beautiful post-and-rung ladderbacks with a single slat and obviously made from green oak with a woven willow seat. After sitting and examining them over my coffee I went to find someone who could tell me more about them. A chap at reception told me they’d been made about 20 years before but he couldn’t remember the name of the maker. Anyway, if I liked them then maybe I could buy one, he informed me, as the Trust were about to get rid of them.
A couple of weeks in a damp barn had given the chairs a coating of mould, especially on the willow seats and it took several days to wash each one with hot water and a solution of oxalic acid, clean and reoil the woodwork and carry out some minor repairs. After 20 years of hard work in a busy cafe this amounted to two broken rungs, damage to the top edge of some slats and a few worn willow rods, testament to just how strong and durable green wood chairs are. For me it was brilliant to work on them all, handling each one and getting to see how the maker had used even wood which was slightly bent or curved around a knot in order to make the most from his trees. I imagined how it would be to shave the 200 legs, 50 slats and 600 rungs for them and the feeling of watching them take shape. I was so inspired that I decided to try and track down the maker.
A great day today teaching Sam Robinson on a one-to-one workshop at Sprint Mill. Sam is a current apprentice on the Bill Hogarth Apprenticeship scheme, now in his second year. We’d been talking about various crafts a couple of weeks ago and he asked me to run a course to learn how I carve bowls and improve his technique.
Sam had brought along some birch logs which were really fresh and ideal for the project. Once cleaved in half with a froe we began immediately with marking out guidelines for the bowl and axing out a twist in the wood. I always start by establishing a flat surface for the base of the bowl. This makes it sit stably on the bench and acts as a reference surface for marking out the height and measuring the depth as you carve. Flattening the top surface at this stage is a lot of work that will then be carved away when hollowing.
Before that though, we flattened the top surface of the bowl then remarked our shape and did a little more work with the adze before moving on to using gouges and knives. I had brought a selection of tools that I have used over the years for carving bowls, explaining their pros and cons. I demonstrated how I push the wide gouge through the wood using my body weight and hand positions to add power which then leads to controlled cutting and a smooth finish. Sam is well used to working with tools of course and a quick learner so he quickly picked it up and before long had a bowl full of beautiful shavings. As well as the gouges, we used a selection of hook knives including one long-handled knife designed especially for bowl carving, cutting across the grain to smooth the bottom of the bowl.
At the end of the day Sam took away a really well-made, good looking bowl but more importantly the practical skills in using the adze and finishing tools. He was already planning his next bowl as he left.
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Later this week I’m teaching a 1-to-1 course on green wood bowl carving for Sam Robinson, one of the Bill Hogarth Coppice apprentices. It’s something I really enjoy doing, partly because it uses such a simple tool kit, my hollowing adze and large hook knife being principal among them. Sam has done a little carving already and is looking for some tuition to improve his efficiency with the tools and final finish. I also want to spend time with him focusing on design and the overall balance and shape of his bowls.
On Sunday I organised a group of volunteers, the NW scythe ‘gang’, to do some coppicing in Edward & Romola Acland’s woods. It’s a 2 acre hazel with standards woodland that Edward & Romola have been working for about 20 years. When they bought it, it was overstood and hadn’t been worked for around 30 years. Since then they’ve brought it back to a beautiful example of coppice almost entirely using hand tools. This was a chance for us to see a well-managed and productive woodland and learn about the many products that are cut from each hazel stool including hedging stakes, bean poles, pea sticks, garden stakes and of course firewood.
The inner side of this bark is much darker than of the spring bark so I started to wonder if this is ‘winter bark’. In countries with a tradition of working with birch bark, bark is harvested in the dormant season for the darker coloured layer inside. This is scraped away to reveal the lighter bark underneath and make patterns and designs on the finished work, like these baskets by 
The first stage of sharpening a scythe is to peen the blade, drawing out the edge to thin it and give the right bevel angle. When you start out, the peening jig designed and made by Schroeckenfux along with Peter Vido is a good way to go; it’s quick to learn, relatively foolproof (but not without some care and attention) and will give consistent results. As your mowing progresses though you’ll start to see the limitations of the jig and want to learn to peen your scythe freehand with hammer and anvil. This will enable you to achieve a finer edge, different bevels for different vegetation and more control over the whole process.
When I started out peening, I cleaned up and handled an old carpenters hammer which served me well but wasn’t quite heavy enough. About a year ago I was visiting Gerhard Wagner in Austria and he explained that the hammer should be heavy enough to do the work simply from the force of letting it fall rather than actively ‘hitting’ the blade and suggested using hammer with a head weight of around 600g. There were a few other factors I wanted and, after a lot of searching I finally bought my new peening hammer earlier this year.
Made by Britool and sold as a riveting hammer, it has a nicely designed head with a rectangular cross-section at the flat face. It also has a cross-peen face and weighs in at 650g so ideal for peening. When it arrived I used some wet and dry paper to soften the sharp bevels at the edges of the flat face and shortened the handle so it’s now just 160mm long. To maintain accuracy and consistency in your peening it helps to tuck the elbow of your hammer hand into your side, restricting it’s movement. A longer handle prevents you doing this as it catches on your thigh and since you’re only using the hammer’s own weight, the extra leverage of a long handle isn’t necessary.
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