Scythes & Scything

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm AT bellsouth.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [permaculture] Followup: Re: Sward Gardning Fwd: 
[fukuoka_farming] no till in the uk
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:20:27 -0400
From: Lawrence F. London, Jr. <venaurafarm AT bellsouth.net>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture AT lists.ibiblio.org>
To: permaculture <permaculture AT lists.ibiblio.org>,	Market Farming 
<marketfarming AT lists.ibiblio.org>

On 3/28/2011 11:15 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
> Reposted from another list
>
> 1. Rhisiart Gwilym Says:
>
> Gene, I just saw your item on 'Crazy Ideas For Crazy Garden
> Farmers'. I was trying to post this comment on that page, but the
> server won't let me, so I'm putting it here. Hope it's useful anyway:
>
> In the1960s I was a member of the Henry Doubleday Research
> Association, which originated in Britain, but had members by then
> in many countries. The legendary Lawrence Hills's baby, it was a
> charitable association of smallholders and backyard gardeners
> which gave away expert knowledge and interesting,
> practically-proven new ideas to do with food husbandry of all kinds.
>
> One of our members at that time had a fascinating practise in his
> garden in Cymru Dwyrain (East Wales), which he called 'Sward
> Gardening'.

Organic Recipes, Organic Food, Local Food, Small Farms, Family Farms,
Edible Landscapes, Shop Local – OrganicToBe.org » Blog Archive » Gene
Logsdon: Pancakes From Perennial Wheatgrass
Grainhttp://organictobe.org/2010/07/07/gene-logsdon-pancakes-from-perennial-wheatgrass-grain/#comment-7527

Rhisiart Gwilym Says:

et, I’ll try to describe the way of making balanced long-handle shears
for grass, etc.

You need the sort of standard scissor-shaped two-handed shears/clippers;
the old standard kind.

If you can only find the short, ‘big-scissors’ -like kind, you’ll need
to take off the hand grips and weld on extension tubes to the tangs
yourself. I’ve done this with a couple that I’ve made. But if you can,
find some whose blades are angled to lie flat to the ground, but then
have long tube handles going up to about waist level, where the hand
grips are.

As they are, these long-handled shears are quickly quite tiring to use,
because they are unbalanced, so you have to lift the weight of the
cutting blades (usually the heaviest part of the whole tool) at the end
of long levers — the handle tubes — which makes them even more
weighty-feeling.

Depending on the exact design of the clippers, and where your hands go
when you’re using them, you have to get some extension tubes to spring
off the original tubes somewhere, and run back on either side of you to
points somewhere behind you.

The crucial point is that they must be so angled and/or bent that you
can close the clippers right down to their completely shut position,
without the extensions hitting your sides. They have to be still clear,
on either side of you, even then. This takes a bit of trial to get
right, so at first, just tack-weld the extensions onto the original
tubes. The exact shape, and any bends that you give the tubes doesn’t
matter, as long as you get this right.

You can shorten the overall length of the extension tubes considerably,
by adding counterweights on their back ends (behind you) until, when
you’re standing in a comfortably-balanced upright posture, the whole
tool just sits balanced in you hands, with the cutting blades hovering
just above the ground, with no effort from your wrists to lift them. All
you’re doing is holding the tool in your relaxed hands, and making the
clipping motion. Make sure that its all custom fitted to your shape, so
that you can work in that comfortable, upright position, without
bending, when the blades are at just the right height above the ground —
about an inch. That posture is an important point.

Once you’ve found by trial the right comfortable shape of the extension
tubes for you, then you can weld them on strongly.

After some practise, you’ll find the knack of using this tool easily for
considerable periods without strain. It covers ground surprisingly
quickly, and will go through quite tough ground-level foliage.

The other thing to become familiar with is tightening and loosening the
bolt which connects the two ‘scissor’ blades, so that they’re moving
easily, but shearing across each other just tightly enough to make clean
cuts reliably. Occasional oiling of the blades helps.

I rarely sharpen. The blades seem to do that for themselves as they
slide across each other, if you get quality hard steel and do the
initial cutting angle-set just right on each blade — trial and error. I
use a 4 1/2 inch angle-grinder, with linishing discs, to sharpen and
angle-set. More delicate in their action than grinding discs.

One thing you are likely to encounter from time to time is sheared
bolts, because of the long periods of extended work which your tool is
doing. Have spare bolts and a pair of spanners always handy.

I also made an East European-style scythe, as the Vido family recommend,
but with a universal, settable and clampable joint connection between
the blade and the snath. I custom-made the blade too, to work with this
arrangement, after studying a lot of the blades shown on the Vido website:

http://www.scytheconnection.com/

Blade sharpness maintenance — both honing and peening — are necessary
skills to learn with scythes, to keep them effective. But then they
really are, amazingly so. See the videos on the Vido site. That idea
that they speak about, of being able to rest yourself whilst you scythe,
once you find the right sort of Tai Chi rhythm, is true! Amazing!

These are almost all the tools that I need when I’m doing the extensive
sward and mulch cutting which I need for my way of doing no-till food
growing.

I have also an old heirloom sickle, which I’ve found surprisingly useful
when you get the knack of using it efficiently. But that’s another story.
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