Benjamin Bouchard

After years of development I was finally able to have custom American pattern blades produced, ultimately partnering with Schröckenfux, the very same company that produces the blades for Seymour that I've been so critical of. The design was mathematically modeled to optimize the curvature, and the form that resulted just so happened to be nearly identical to my favorite antique blade, shown below. Intended as an all-purpose grass blade to handle roughly 95% of modern mowing contexts, the blade responds especially well to a right-hand pivot with a drawing action of the left hand, a fine tip that's well positioned for comfortable trimming cuts from the toe, and a broad heel able to slice through thick-stalked weeds and saplings without bottoming out. A 10° angle is preset in the tang rather than the traditional flat configuration, meaning most users won't need to have the tang heated and bent to their proper angle, as 10° is the average angle most users other than the very tall or very short will end up needing. The blade is 30" end to end and weighs a lovely 1lb 9oz. I consider between 1lb 8oz and 1lb 12oz to be ideal for most blades in most settings to give enough mass to carry nicely through the stroke. Other than one very brief period seemingly in the 1950s where Redtenbacher was producing near-perfect clones of American blades, I can safely say that these are the finest American blades ever produced in Austria. And even in those cases, the curvature wasn't as good as on these. In testing, the blade I kept for personal use behaves just like my favorite antique.

It's a narrow faced anvil and would be used with a broad-faced hammer, with the blade upside down during peening. It isn't the shape I'd prefer personally, but given it's an antique with some degree of provenance I'd not make any alterations to it and use a different anvil.

Jasen Johnston wrote:I want one. Where can I buy it?

You can find them at BYXCO.com. under our snaths subsection. 🙂

It's in rough enough shape that there's not much point in refinishing it if you plan on using it for display--that erases much of its history. Regarding mounting it to a wall,  hanging it on a hook by the shank (the portion of the tang that's inline with the blade before it makes the 90° turn) with a peg under the edge near the tip would probably be the easiest way to mount it. I would suggest deliberately blunting it with a few strokes of a file or sharpening stone if hanging it anywhere where people could bump it.

Elizabeth Litke wrote:Hey there everyone! I found an old scythe at a pawn shop yesterday and snatched it up. I was wondering if anyone here would be able to guestimate how old it might be. It seems to be in pretty rough shape so I don't want to take it apart just yet, but if I need to take the blade off let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Thank you in advance! I'm looking forward to learning more about my find.

The blade is a SWECO American pattern bush blade with a plain web, made in Sweden. I'm unsure of who the actual manufacturer of those blades is, however, as that was just a brand name used by whoever was ordering them from Sweden. The snath appears to be a Sta-Tite Supreme No.105

Sta-Tite was founded in 1921 so it is certainly no older than that.

If I had to hazard a guess, both the blade and snath were likely made in the late 1940's through mid-1950's.

It's been years since I wrote the original version, and now "A Primer on the Selection, Use, and Maintenance of the American Scythe" has finally received a much-needed update. While the changes are minor, more are planned, and most principally the text has been edited to better reflect my current thoughts on best practices, and have added some better specifics and details, as well as a diagram the proper ergonomic hold on the nibs in use. I hope to soon have updated versions of some of the diagrams, as well, and once the document is polished to my liking I intend on beginning work separate documents detailing advanced technical tuning and antique restoration.

Manual reel mowers were actually originally intended as grooming tools to be used after mowing with a scythe! While it's very possible to get a "lawn-perfect stubble" with a scythe, it requires much more skill and often a blade tuned just for that use to achieve one reliably, and so reel mowers allowed common folk to do a "hack job" knocking down the tall grass with the scythe and then go over it with the reel mower to trim the uneven stubble to a uniform length. This is why they perform so poorly on taller grass--they were only ever meant to handle stubble left by the scythe, and were especially used for spaces where people would be engaging in activities of some kind, such as lawn games, English style gardens, and so on.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Thanks Benjamin. Good info! So the rings are just a compression fit to hold the blade and the snath together?

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They would have originally have been held in with an iron wedge, but they often fell out. The rings do have a slight taper to them such that they shouldn't slip off the end of the snath once the wedge is driven home. The wedge itself would have had a little lip on it for tapping back out if you needed to dismount the blade.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I am torn -- dive into that antique steel, tear it up and rework it into a new scythe.

And yet, just as valid, display it as a marvelous historical artifact, with all the binding methods intact.

Dunno. Sitting on the fence while there is scythe work that needs doing .

Doesn't appear to be anything of major historical significance. There's no binding--that's a double-ringed bush snath made somewhere around 1940-150. Fairly common hardware. Better to put it back to work, if there's work to be done with it.

Ben Brownlow wrote:Benjamin,
Thanks for the feedback, particularly on American / English style blades, which I admittedly have far less experience with. Looks like I know who to talk to for more context on them. Let me know if there's any sources on them that you recommend. I'll likely incorporate some of your feedback eventually, when harvest season eases up here.

Sorry for the late reply--I was away from home for a few days. Regarding resources on them, I'm probably the most prominent one, especially when it comes to the historical research side of things. There are lots of good snippets of info on Google Books in old agricultural gazettes and the like, and some catalogs available either on my blog or on Archive.org but it's important to take historical documents in context, as many of them will have bad advice, incorrect info, use words in ways not common today, and so on and so forth. A combination of field work and study has led to the conclusions I've drawn, though I'm not infallible by any means, myself! Study and research have an interesting way of making you contradict your past self quite regularly as you find new information or make new discoveries regarding documentation, technique, or best management practices. And I mostly mow for vegetation management purposes rather than for things like hay generation (though I've done some) or grain, so I have to rely on others' word when it comes to some methods or practices.