Any experience with Günas Emel scythe blades (from Turkey)?

Hello,

What is your experience with Günas (Emel) scythes? They're Turkish and a lower cost variant of the premium Austrian style scythes from Fux and Falci. These seem to be quite popular in eastern Europe.

Marcel

The attitudes towards quality varies between those tow areas as well.
Have you read any reviews on them anywhere?
From this video, inferior

I didn't see anything in that video to convince me that they would be inferior. A couple of those guys in the primary forging steps are heading for a cataract diagnosis at an early age, though.

It looks to me like they're turning out a reasonable product without the benefit of state-of-the-art technology, and that tracks as quite "permie" to me. That part of the world has a very long history of high-quality steelmaking, so there's that as well.

The proof would be to hear from someone who has one and has been using it, obviously.

They basically learned from Falci and produce blades of good quality if somewhat thicker build than one finds from Falci and Fux, but that thicker build also makes them more robust. They are better than Tovarna Kos in my estimation, and Tovarna Kos isn't bad by any stretch. Not the top of the line blades, but very strong value blades.

Benjamin Bouchard wrote:They basically learned from Falci and produce blades of good quality if somewhat thicker build than one finds from Falci and Fux, but that thicker build also makes them more robust. They are better than Tovarna Kos in my estimation, and Tovarna Kos isn't bad by any stretch. Not the top of the line blades, but very strong value blades.

Thank you very much for this information. It's reassuring to see this message coming from soeone in the know.

A cheaper, but a decent blade at a low price also gives me more freedom to experiment with the rest of my scything setup:
- I got a flat peening anvil in a dusty corner in a local shop. A peening jig is nicer, but the anvil will do for now. I'm not planning to mess up any scythe blade, but it definitely feels safer building experience with a decent 20€ blade versus a much more expensive 70€ one.
- I'm building a snath today. Plenty of proper wood available around here, both green and less so.
- The local diy store has quite ok double screw snath/blade rings at very low price.
- For a whetstone, funnily enough, I found a quite good old one in our woodshed.

Do you have any European source to buy them?

hans muster wrote:Do you have any European source to buy them?

I don't know how polite it is to post product sales links here, but Wasserman in Poland has them and ships EU wide. And if you'd like to look for yourself, the EAN code for the 70 cm Günas Emel scythe is 5906489020070.

Hello,
Yes I have used turkish scythe blades. First I bought a "Kadax" blade via a french site Manomano (=> but the sender was a polish site).
This "Kadax" blade needed peening. It is a narrow blade for diverse herbs.
Then recently I bought 2 (80cm and 90cm) "Emel" blades with a different paper label, via the same Manomano (=> but the sender is another polish site). The logo on the tang is the same as the Kadax one. I have only tested the 80cm Emel blade but it is my best blade. It was really ready for mowing, no previous peening needed. I tested it on smooth 20cm herbs which are quite difficult to cut as the herb bends and turns toward the ground if the blade is not sharp enough.
I am not 100% sure where these scythes are from, but the logo on their flag seems the same as the engraved one on the tang :
https://gunastools.com/en/
They have many other scythes types. I asked a search engine "turkish günas emel scythe blades".
In conclusion, yes these possibly turkish blades are of high quality,
Have nice mowing sessions !
armel

Gunas produces their blades in both Turkey and Iran. I'm not sure of a method of identifying which plant your blade is from, however, but Turkey is the primary of the two locations to my understanding.