sweasel.com

Scythes always win in a five minute competition. Which I guess is fine if you are a subsistence farmer and try to live off the proceeds from a small lot, or if you are a hobbyist. Admittedly, I do quite a few things the old fashioned way just for fun.

Let’s see them compete on something that takes half an hour or more to mow.

“Scythe vs. trimmer” is moot for me:
In “Uncle Al vs. yard man” I won! (-:

Loser does the lawn, and yard man does a good job, better than I’d do it. He uses a commercial riding mower that goes really fast!

After years of stoning my gardening sickles, I got the idea to use use a chef’s steel on them instead. It’s much faster. About every fifth sharpening I use the stone. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a diamond embedded steel and drop the stone entirely.

I guess you’re all preparing for the Apocalypse, when there’ll be no more fuel for the mowers and whipper-snippers?

As a kid of 12 or 13, I got to try a a scythe and a sickle, once, at my grandfather’s farm. I was surprised at how well and easily they cut after you sorted out the technique. My grandfather did sharpen them on a rock that day but I’d thought it was just a matter of expediency for the moment – I had no idea that this had anything to do with the real way of sharpening them. This is fascinating for me.

By the way, that is a fabulous painting….

No scythe experience but plenty on the sickle. I have a new/old broad axe and adze that I’m working with to get the right techniques going. Just made a bois d’arc maul that pleases me. I must join a cartoon so I can bust some critter on the head with it.

Be careful walking around with that thing. In Dance to the Music of Time, the guy sees a person wearing a cloak & carrying a scythe, cross the road. Fearing it was death, he crashes his car and dies.

Husband has more experience than he’d like—swinging a yoyo, and the machete. I don’t know why it’s called a yoyo—it’s a double-sided blade on a long handle. Maybe it’s a regionalism.

I’ve never used either, although in my neighborhood they would make great defensive weapons. 😁

It must take forever to get anything finished if you have to sharpen your blade every five or ten minutes, though!

Yoyo: sling blade or kaiser blade, perhaps?

The addled green pastoralists have a sort of sick fetishised nostalgia for this lifestyle, which would last about 30 minutes into their first day living it. That guy sharpening his scythe is actually 26.

@David Gillies—Thank you. Yes, it appears that a yoyo and a sling blade are the same thing.

I would watch my father sharpen the garden hoes and shovels, then I presumed that I could do the same—so I did. He never chided me so I guess I didn’t ruin the edge (too much). I can’t stand to hear a knife blade being sharpened though—it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. But it doesn’t bother me if I do it myself. Needless to say, Husband taught me early in our marriage how to sharpen my kitchen knives.

When I was a kid, there was a guy in a pushcart that would come down the street that would sharpen knives.

Ric Fan: We had the same thing in our subdivision in south Jersey back in the late ’50s and early ’60s. He was a really old guy (I was around 10 or 12 or so) so I guess he was probably in his middle 40s, early 50s. That was really old to me). Sharpened scissors and I’m guessing knives as well.

Deborah HH: When I was in the army I bought a couple extra ammo pouches. One was for cigarettes (would hold a whole carton of king size), the other was for tools, one of which was a file. It amazed me how many of the kids didn’t realize that sharpening an entrenching tool, shovel, or axe would really help. Never was really good at it, but at least my section’s stuff had some sharpness to the edges. I never did get the hang of sharpening knives, though.

I think it was supposed to be Abraham Lincoln that said if given six hours to fell a tree, he’d spend the first four sharpening the axe.

You forgot to mention 2 types of handles available. The European straight handle which requires specific lengths of the main shaft and grip handle, and the curved American type. Both work well but the blade angle is different.

I have an area with obnoxious vines that grow incredibly fast, grape, bittersweet, poison ivy and even more. I found the European handle with a Fox ditch blade the best tool to use to clear the vines. It can be wielded at any angle and has great reach. It turned an hours job into minutes. (the ditch blade is great for taking out small saplings at ground level as well).