Did up this featherweight unit that, with 33" blade, snath, and all metal fittings included, clocks in at only 3lbs 15oz. Many, if not most, Euro rigs run heavier than this. A Scytheworks mid-sized snath with a 30" Luxor blade (described by them as one of the lightest-per-inch they sell) would make for a 4lb 6oz combination by the statistics listed on their site. (Note: this is not a dig at Scytheworks, which is an excellent company doing excellent work in the scythe world, but merely used here as a basis for comparison, as most other companies either do not have weights listed or have values that are of suspect accuracy mentioned.)
I'd put together this extra-slim wooden snath, from a defective Seymour No.1 blank, years ago when I was first experimenting with the North Star hardware I use on the Longfellow snaths. It had a heavy steel plate on the top for the screw of the ring to bear into, much like Sta-Tite rings did, as I hadn't yet hit upon the idea of using a floating bearing plate affixed directly to the ring. Dusted it off and added a floating plate to the ring, removed the old heavy plate, and spliced on a new piece of ash. For those curious, the blade is an old Sibley laminated New England pattern with a plain web and half set.
(Note: These images are linked from Facebook, so they will only be visible for about a month before they revise the URLs and the image links break. If you're reading this from the future, you have my apologies! However, a post with the images may be found in the
Scything Improvers' Forum group.)
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