I picked up my scythe at the post office on Saturday. I ordered it a couple of weeks ago from Scythe Supply in Perry, Maine. They sell an “outfit” or kit which includes the scythe blade, a custom made handle (called a snath) built to fit your height (very important for 5’3″ me!), a sharpening stone, a peening jig (which is a device to reshape the edge of the blade after you’ve hit a stone with it), and an instruction book.
For ease of shipping, it comes in pieces, so the first task was to glue the handle parts together and set them into the shaft at the correct angle (hard to do when you’ve never used a scythe and therefore don’t have a clue what “the right angle” for you is!) and then wait 24 hours for the glue to dry…
But on Sunday morning, as soon as the dew on the grass had dried, I got to try out my new scythe:
It’s going to take a lot of practice to learn to mow well, that’s for darn sure! It reminds me of when I was doing kata in karate class – you have to coordinate six or more parts of your body to all do the exact right motion at the same time, and if you concentrate too much on one aspect (the angle of your hands, so that the blade of the scythe remains parallel with the ground, for instance ) then something else (the twisting motion from the hips through to the shoulders, for instance) goes badly wrong.
Practice, practice, practice, and as soon as it stops raining I’ll get lots of practice taming our lawn that is completely out of control. Which is going to be great exercise, because swinging this thing uses just about every muscle from my knees to my shoulders, and we’ve got a lot (way too much) lawn.
Here’s a full picture of the scythe:
And a close-up of the blade (made for Scythe Supply by an Austrian company which has been forging scythe blades since 1540):
Safety first! The one additional thing I ordered with my scythe was a blade cover. I’m very glad I did and I’ve made a rule for myself that I must tie the blade cover on every time I put the scythe down and walk away from it, even if it’s only going to be for 5 minutes:
The main purpose of the scythe will be to keep the grass in the orchard mowed, partly so that the grass doesn’t compete with the young trees (which are all doing great, by the way), and partly so that we can walk in the orchard without wading hip-deep through grass. But once I get the hang of it, it will also be great for cutting the bits of “lawn” that we don’t want a couple of times a summer to keep the particularly bad weeds at bay.
Now, if it will just stop raining so that I can go out and play with my new toy some more!
out here 
I’m drooling. What a gorgeous tool.
Very shiny!
What metal is the blade made from?
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It is made of hammered steel (as opposed to stamped steel, i.e. made by hand rather than by machine).
Oh, it’s just beautiful. Thank you for the close-up of the blade. And very sensible, the tying-on-of-cover of you’re leaving it even for a moment.
I can see mowing the lawn with this being a very meditative activity.
The blade is even prettier in real life. The photo doesn’t do it justice.
Once I learn to do it properly, yes, it will be very meditative. On how often to sharpen the blade while mowing, the book says “I prefer to sharpen as often as I can break the trance of mowing. This may be every 15 minutes.”
The conventional wisdom is that the scythe cuts better when the dew is still on, and I have found that to be true, so far. I like that feature, because I can get some trimming done before the sun gets high and hot. Give that a try, some time.
I notice from your picture that the blade is about 6 inches (+/-)i n the air at the top of your backswing. You might try keeping it just skimming the ground at that point, and throughout your swing, if you’re not bottoming out on clumps of grass. If you skim the blade back at the same height after a cut as you used for the cut, it will be more likely to be at the right angle and height for the next swing.
I say that with all of a month of sporadic experience …. but it seems to work for me. My ground is rough and all on a slope, which makes the swing interesting. It’s good exercise, if you go at it right, though, and pretty satisfying when you are having even modest success. Good mowing!
How is the scything coming along? That’s a great idea and I hope it works well for you. A friend of mine said her grandfather used to clear large areas with a scythe and it was very quick work for him.