Sean K
pfm Member
Is it about the hedge?
Scythe buying advice
- Thread starter Rodrat
- Start date
All you need to know -
Austrian Scythes for sale. (thescytheshop.co.uk)
Decent ones aren't cheap but are far faster than any strimmer with any kind of blade or chord. They are also FAR safer than any strimmer with a blade, and don't damage your hearing.
A "set" of all you need - snath, blade, a couple of stones and some kind of peening kit will leave very little, if anything, from £200.
Austrian Scythes for sale. (thescytheshop.co.uk)
Decent ones aren't cheap but are far faster than any strimmer with any kind of blade or chord. They are also FAR safer than any strimmer with a blade, and don't damage your hearing.
A "set" of all you need - snath, blade, a couple of stones and some kind of peening kit will leave very little, if anything, from £200.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Presumably you pay for it out of your hedge fund.
A) If you need exercise why not invest in a bill hook a hand held tool which works kike a mini scythe. If used with your right hand you can hold a suitable stick in your left hand which speeds up the work and you will still have two legs when all is done!
B) if you have a brush cutter and prefer a scythe...... you could be a masochist and need help! look out for men in green coats!
B) if you have a brush cutter and prefer a scythe...... you could be a masochist and need help! look out for men in green coats!
cutting42
Arrived at B4 Hacker Ergo
Spoken/written by someone who has never used a sharp Austrian scythe, correctly set. Far, far less effort with a scythe - I have used both a scythe and Stihl petrol strimmer with brush-cutter blade for many hours each and in coarse, rank weeds and the like, nothing fantastically woody, the scythe wins every time, by a country mile.
Do NOT buy a traditional English scythe - they have to be ground and sharpened, Austrian blades need to be peened and sharpened.
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Thorn
pfm Member
But when cutting the sort of area a scythe is intended for this requires too much bending for an elderly back. And other sorts of back are rare in this forum.
Rug Doc
pfm Member
I was flinching when she threw it overhead..
Wonder if she's 'still' got all her limbs??
wow&flutter
pfm Member
Spooky topic as I was reminiscing about this only last week. My late father was born in 1926 and lasted 92 years but I can remember him when I was a child using a scythe and it truly was poetry in motion.
He was born on a farm in the west of Scotland and back in the day a Scythe was I guess the only method for cutting crops.
He had a field around his final home and would cut the very long grass around the fence boundary with a scythe that was likely 70 years old and even in his sixties it was all technique.
I recon he could cut twice as much as I could nowadays with a strimmer.
Done right there’s a certain satisfaction even watching it!
He was born on a farm in the west of Scotland and back in the day a Scythe was I guess the only method for cutting crops.
He had a field around his final home and would cut the very long grass around the fence boundary with a scythe that was likely 70 years old and even in his sixties it was all technique.
I recon he could cut twice as much as I could nowadays with a strimmer
.Done right there’s a certain satisfaction even watching it!
cctaylor
pfm Member
It would not have been the main method for cutting crops, long before he was born the binder and knife bar mower were the norm. However a scythe would have been used to "open" a field. You would have cut a bout round the outside of field so that the horse would not tramp the crop particularly with cereal crops which would have been much taller in those days (modern crops have been bred with shorter straw).
A skilled man with a scythe was an an asset until the combine displaced the binder.
