Old Men With Scythes

Old Men with Scythes Traveling the roads of rural Austria by motorcycle in nineteen sixty two or three we would see old men with scythes mowing the ditch banks: their retirement careers, but a job done now days by tractors, even in the Alps and I leave the ditches to the tractors, except at the mouth of the driveway, but after that I am the old man with the scythe. I do have my grandfather’s Ametican scythe, but the blade is stamped-steel as we made them in this country. I use a scythe blade of cold-forged, folded Austrian Steel in layers of two types of steel that vary in hardness, which makes it easier to sharpen to a fine edge. Of course that means you will have to do a lot of fine sharpening. The time spent sharpening is proportionate to the ease of sharpening and the roughness of use. This here Dogs Plot is rough territory for mowing and I am too rough a tool user, not an old master, just old, so I generally use a shorter blade made especially as a ditch blade, midway between a brush hook and a twenty four or six inch wheat mower. I have several twenty-four inch blades which I have broken at he heel on trees, rocks, or half buried old farm machinery, and which my mechanic has welded - a couple of them twice in slightly different places.and they are stronger at the break than before even - but I just use the ditch blade. And this season I had not been stopping to hone it every five minutes like the book of Scythe says, The Master Mower carries his curved whetstone in a copper sheath looped over your bel and filled with water; so as to stop mowing every five minutes, stand and hone for five minutes then go back to mowing; which keeps the tool sharp, prevents the mower from overheating and blowing a seal, but ALSO and especially from becoming over inspired by the power one has with it that one become dangerous also to bedded fawns, trees, and the blade itself. Well I had not been good to the tool this year, had only honed to before setting out, not carried it along, had failed to stop often enough, overheated, nicked the blade, and never lasting more than half an hour. Worst of all I had not I had not even done the necessary, intermittent peen-hammering that these cold-forged blades need so that the sharpening stone will not be trying to put a low slope point on a blunt edge. The system wouldn’t work if things did not wear away, and with good behavior, the tool will last as long as the man. And so it had been wearing on me. it was past time for some cold forging. See it happen in the video with some of the misses and bad clangers clipped out. I had filed it first to get the nicks out. I didn’t file it enough. Today’s another day.