Just back from the my trip away to Edale and then Somerset. A week full of steel, blades, mowing and some rain. A brilliant week; such a lot happened that I’ll take a day or two to sort through the photos and memories before I post.
As every mower soon learns keeping ones blade sharp is one of the key elements to success with a scythe. After four years of practice I can make a reasonable job of sharpening, but I am not yet satisfied that I have found the best combination of peening and whetting. The feeling that I could do a better and more efficient job of honing which has lead me to revisit techniques and equipment including buying one each of the stones Simon Fairlie sells to experiment with. As a sideline to this experimentation I have wondered about how mowers in the past managed to keep their blade sharp with a ‘strickle’ made from wood?
In the past a four-sided wooden strickle was commonly used to hone blades in the field. It was made of green oak or sometimes lime wood. Swine fat, soap or resin was smeared onto the strickle which was then coated with sand. Two opposite sides were sanded at a time so that there were two newly-sanded coarse sides to start on and two finer used ones to finish with.
The strickle was fixed to the top end of the snath when not in use. Being quite heavy and the snath longer to accommodate its fixing I think it must have also functioned as a counter balance to the typical heavy forged blade of the time – something I will try out sometime with my English ‘fensman’ scythe. The mower in the field would carry a supply of fat and sand in a sandhorn slung by a string over his shoulder. Sand could be poured from an opening in the narrow end and the fat was held in the wide end.
Not content to just read about it I have now made myself an oak and a limewood strickle using one of a pair of antique strickles (ebay!) as a pattern. I have got a good supply of local ‘egg timer’ fine sand, but I am unsure from the descriptions I have read how the grease/sand coating works. Does it work like a soft grinding paste, or is hard fat/tallow likely to be better? I will have to experiment, but if anyone has any theories or historical sources I would be interested to hear them.
Tomorrow I’m heading off on the annual pilgrimage to Somerset for the ‘Green Scythe Festival’. I’ve been attending since it started in 2005 and now as well as the mowing, it’s a place to catch up with those friends who I know and meet only through this event.
Christiane is again instructing on the ‘scythe teachers’ course on Thursday & Friday and then we’ll both be busy on Saturday with beginners instruction and my workshops on snath-making and blade repairs.
Before that though, we’re going to spend a few days in the Peak District doing some hill-walking and meeting up with Robin Wood to teach him to use a scythe and mow together.
On Sunday I ran the first of my mowing courses at Sprint Mill near Kendal in Cumbria. The course is designed to introduce people to mowing with a scythe or provide a refresher for those who would like to be reminded of the techniques and improve their skills.
After weeks of unsettled weather and heavy showers, we were fortunate in having a completely clear, sunny day. I arrived early to mow a space to start in the orchard on my own in the early morning. I had time to relax and calm myself before the day, enjoying the quiet and the gentle exercise of mowing.
Seven people came along to learn, some complete beginners and some with a bit of experience, with a range of ages and backgrounds.
The first session of the day is to introduce everyone to the components of the scythe and go through the process of setting up the snath and blade. The scythe should be a very comfortable and ‘body-friendly’ tool to use, not putting strain on muscles or joints and to achieve this it is important to understand how to adjust it for your own build and technique.
After a short break we walked over to the orchard, passing by two beautiful traditionally-managed meadows full of red clover, yellow rattle and a multitude of grass species. As we walked we discussed the idea of having an expert teach a day on meadow plant identification and management, something that I’ll continue to look into.
The orchard is a perfect setting for a course, the grass is in good condition and the ground flat enough for beginners to work with but there are fences, other obstacles and of course, the trees themselves to work with. This is the kind of situation that many people are mowing in for themselves and it gives them more learning opportunites than an empty meadow.
I always take a few minutes to explain the principles of the ‘tai chi’ movement and lead people through a simple exercise to loosen their body and feel that motion. I get each person to again check their setup and then guide them into mowing. The grass was in much better condition than when the NW group mowed it last autumn and soon everyone was busy mowing. At this point I move around the group, offering advice, answering questions, making suggestion on changes to the set-up based on their technique but at the same time letting each person have time to learn for themselves. We also worked together on sharpening in the field using whetstones and two different methods.
After lunch we returned for more mowing and to collect up the cut grass. Our hosts, Edward and Romola decided that the best solution for the grass would be a compost heap rather than spreading it out to dry. Half the group continued to mow while the other half raked and forked a huge amount of grass into a large springy pile, swapping roles after a short time.
Rhuari had an English pattern scythe with him which he had been trying to use before the course. Although in the morning he had learned to set up and use one of the Austrian scythes and been impressed by its lightness and efficiency, he was keen to try his own with his new knowledge of mowing technique. We checked the setup and tried it out but it was immediately obvious that the blade needed a lot of work in sharpening. He was mowing very well with the Austrian scythe so I’ll be interested to see how he gets on with the English variation in the future.
With time pressing on, we returned to the Mill for a demonstration of peening using the jig. There is a lot to fit into a course like this and, through talking to people who’ve been on introductory courses, I’ve decided that to also teach peening means having less time for mowing and overloads folk so the information doesn’t stick. I added in an impromptu demonstration of repairing a blade using a file and the peening anvil to fix a small dent in Tony’s blade.
Everyone seemed to have had a great day. They were impressed enough that, of those that hadn’t already, lots of folk bought a scythe kit to continue their mowing and were invited to join the events organised by the NW group.
The next course will be 2nd July also at Sprint Mill. To book a place email Steve Tomlin.
Time is flying; a week ago I held my first scythe mowing course of the year.
Back in 2009 I saw a beautiful orchard, full of daisies and other flowers on the front page of the “Schloß Puchberg’s” catalogue of workshops and talks. I called Mr. Achleitner, the organizer and asked him how the orchard is being mown and told him about my idea to do it with the scythe. Convinced of this idea he invited the “Sensenverein Austria” to do a scythe mowing courses there. We started with 15 people in 2009 and this year we had 28 participants with 3 scythe teachers. We were a bit worried that with all the people eager to mow we would run out of grass – which we did in the end 🙂
Each tutor went to his place and after the introduction I started with the health and safety rules and the names for the parts of the blade and snath. Since we don’t ask for the height of the participants in advance, it was a challenge to set them up with the right size of snath. Everybody got the same blade – a 75cm scythe designed for the Sensenverein. People were surprised how long we took to set everything up and work on the movement and you could see that some were getting a bit impatient because they were so eager to mow grass.
Finally we started mowing and with that they understood why we took all the time to prepare and practise without grass. It needed some reminders: keep the blade on the ground, move towards the grass instead of leaning to it and the most important sentence “watch the person in front of you!”
After some time of mowing, correcting, stopping people because they mowed too close to each other, we stopped for sharpening. This bit of the teaching is for me the most challenging part – you can only explain and show them so much, to explain the angles, the stone has to be at and do it yourself ….. And people tended to do it too fast because they had seen old mowers doing it really fast. They were surprised how slow I sharpen but I don’t see any reason to hurry. I’d rather have a sharp edge than make it blunt because of rushing. The best teacher for sharpness is the blade itself. If you went over the cutting edge with the stone or didn’t do anything to it because of the wrong angle you will definitely find out that it is worse than before you stopped to whet your blade.
People were so happy with mowing that I almost had to force them to have a short break for some breakfast – I was happy about it since I hadn’t had time for it with the start at 7am. But to start that early was good because at 10:30 it was almost to hot to continue mowing. We ran out of grass but found a slope to mow, which people liked because this is what some of them have at home. Together we worked out how to mow it – start at the bottom and mow kind of downhill but still along the slope. You want to mow the grass downhill, so not to carry the weight of the grass uphill. This was the time when we used the wedges and I suggested to them that they don’t need to hold on to the handgrips the normal way. Instead they can switch to holding the snath at the stem or with the right hand on the “Verlängerung” (extension piece) instead of at the handgrip. I encouraged them to play with how it is most comfortable to hold the scythe and mow on a slope.
Finally I called an end to mowing – people had started to mow the lawn! So we dismounted the blades, washed and dryed them. I had prepared blades especially for peening. They had little cracks and bent over edges. I showed them how to repair it and how to get the blade ready for peening. For me a very important thing is to have a shiny blade for peening. If it has rust or dirt on it, this would have a negative effect on the jig and also on the edge of the blade. I showed them how to use the peening jig and the participants had some time to practise on it. But soon we were called for lunch and had to stop. For me a 5 hours course is too short to have enough time to explain and give enough time for practise while you watch and help. But people went away happy to have had the chance to learn how to use such an efficient tool.
During the fire in the workshop, the heat of the flames caused the metal in my tools to soften so the first step in repairing them is to heat-treat them to the correct hardness. I’ve done a little bit of toolmaking before but don’t have my own kit so I was very pleased to get an offer from Robin Wood to do the work in his forge.
For those of you that don’t know, Robin is the UK’s leading pole-lathe bowl turner who rediscovered the craft and has since inspired and helped many other people, me included, to turn bowls using a pole-lathe. In addition to this he is chairman of the Heritage Crafts Association, a spoon-carver and generally great guy. We share similar ideas about craft, design and making ideology so it’s always a pleasure to spend time in his company.
Outside his workshop at the beginning of the Pennine Way stands his small forge. The first stage is to heat each tool to a dull red and then quench it in oil or water to cool the steel as quickly as possible, hardening it. We started out with a couple of cheap kindling axes to check the method and decide on whether to use oil or water for the quench. Water gives a faster quench but with larger tools like axes, this can sometimes lead to stresses being formed in the metal.
Robin was obviously enjoying himself as he took the first axe head, glowing red out of the forge and plunged it into a large jug of cooking oil which promply burst into flames. After testing with the file we decided a water quench was needed which gave us the proper hardness without any problems.
Every tool, axes, adze, gouges, chisels, knives, planes blades and drill bits all went through this process of heating, quenching and testing with the file. When the tool is the right hardness, the file ‘skates’ over the surface rather than biting in. After a while I could also hear the difference in sound the file made on properly hardened steel. All the while Rob & I talked over ideas about making, aesthetics, other craftspeople we know, issues around being an independent maker, the Luddites and loads more. It was pouring with rain but I hardly noticed.
At this stage everything is as hard as possible but also brittle, meaning the edge would break in use so the next stage is to draw out some of the hardness by reheating the steel in a more controlled way. This process is know as ‘tempering’.
We quickly shined up the surfaces of all the tools on Rob’s belt grinder and then took them back to his house and popped them in the oven at 250C, a good tempering temperature for woodworking tools. Part way through we added potatoes for a simple supper.
The tools were left in the oven to ‘soak’ at this temperature for an hour or so until we could see a dark straw colour on the shined surfaces which indicates that the tools have been successfully tempered.
In lots of ways this was the hardest stage of the process to restore my tools and I was glad to benefit from Robin’s experience.
Next stage: handles.
Following the fantastic response to my ‘Mowing with an Austrian Scythe’ course this weekend, I have added an extra date on Saturday 2nd July 2011. This will be again at the wonderful Sprint Mill near Kendal, Cumbria.
This will be followed on Sunday 3rd July with an opportunity for course participants to mow with members of the NW mowers group. Our group meets through the season to mow on local smallholdings or nature reserves. It is a time for sharing ideas and advice, picking up mowing tips and enjoying the pleasure of mowing as part of a group.
Ever since I first saw these fan birds, I’ve been itching to try making them but other projects always seem to have got in the way. Made amazingly from a single piece of wood, fan birds originated in Russia and were a traditional gift symbolising happiness and good health. In the UK, Sean Hellman, a friend of mine from Devon, is the leading fan bird carver and has done a huge amount of work to share the skills as well as making beautiful birds. Seeing Sean at the Bodger’s Ball the other week spurred me into action and at the weekend I carved out a little bird from a piece of Herefordshire ash. Made with just a coping saw and opinel knife, this was a perfect project for my current tool-impoverished situation. I will definitely be making more of them.
As promised, here are the photos of the FAO cradle from their ‘Small Farm Implements’ publication of 1953. In the introduction, the authors (our Mr Hopfen again along with Dr E. Biesalski) make an insightful point which, for me, is at the heart of why I promote the use of the scythe to smallholders, orchard owners, allotmenteers and anyone else with a small amount of vegetation to manage:
Such small implements have the great advantage of being suitable for use on any type of field, and of always being ready for work. Particularly on small fields, they can sometimes accomplish a task more quickly than larger machines which have to be put into working condition before the actual work begins and which need additional attention after the work has been accomplished.
Here then is the instruction manual for building your very own FAO grain cradle, I look forward to seeing them in the fields and at the various scythe events this summer.
ps. If you do build one, please get in touch – I’d love to see it.
On Sunday I met with other members of the Coppice Association NW (CANW) at Moss and Heights Spring Woods for a day of peeling oak bark.
The woods were worked for many years by legendary coppicer Bill Hogarth up until his death in 1999. The woods were then worked by other coppice workers before management was taken on by the Woodland Trust. Just a few weeks ago a deal was made for the woods to be leased to the Bill Hogarth Memorial Apprenticeship Trust (BHMAT) and managed by CANW. The timing fell ideally for us to go in and peel some oak bark, one of Bill’s favourite jobs.
Bark peeling is carried out in the spring, when the weather is warm (even in Cumbria) and the sap is rising in the trees. This makes it possible to strip the bark easily, using a special tool looking like a blunt carving gouge. The bark is collected, dried and sold to the J&FJ Baker in Colyton, Devon, the last tannery in Britain using oak for curing leather. Rebecca Oaks gave us an introduction and demonstration, along with the motivation that 1 tonne of dried bark is currently worth about £600 which sounds a fantastic, but that’s a lot of bark!
A dozen or so people soon organised themselves with a team felling the oak and bringing it over to where the peeling was taking place. These meetings are a great place to catch up with friends and meet new people from the local coppice and greenwood working network. There’s always plenty of news and banter which makes the day fly by. It’s a somehow very satisfying and tactile process and many people commented on the suprisingly sensual nature of it. For me it was much like skinning rabbits or deer – you start off with a tool to begin the peeling but then the best tools are your hands, pushing and teasing off the bark. Inside, the wood is wet with sap and glistens with newness.
In amongst the oak which was being coppiced were a good few birch trees which were also felled but put aside. I’ve got a developing interest in birch and all it’s uses so I decided to see if I could peel some birch bark. In more northern countries birch bark is widely used for making containers, canoes, roofing, clothes and many other items. The bark here in the UK is much thinner but should still be a useful material.
I selected a good clean looking trunk and scored the bark with a knife to remove a small length of bark. Initially I could see it splitting inside and thought I was damaging the bark but this was actually the thicker cambium layer which came away from the wood too. It was then possible to peel the bark away from the cambium though a lot of care was needed at this stage not to damage the bark. We’re a curious bunch and my peeling soon attracted a lot of interest when people saw the sheets of bark and felt how soft but strong they felt, like thin leather. A couple more members had a go and we went away with bark promising to share our experiences of working with it.
By the end of the day we had a several bundles of bark for drying and piles of naked looking oak poles. These can be used for rustic garden furniture making, firewood or charcoal; the secret of making coppice work economical is to use every part of the tree, something that Bill Hogarth was a master of.
