Manual/Push Lawn Mower

[NYCresident2014]

I had one of these when I owned a house with a very small yard. The yard was so small, but the motorless mower still took just too long and I hated the giant grass clippings in the yard, so I eventually gave up and got a gas mulching mower. That lawn took all of 5 minutes to mow.

Funny enough, I now have a 1 acre yard and I still find use for that gas mower. I don't use it for mowing the yard, of course, but whenever I trim bushes, weeds, or other things, I leave them on the ground then run over them with the mower and like magic, they disappear!

[HJ99]

Kinda cool videos showing you can efficiently cut lawn with a scythe.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGNTYPmeLXk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yff467gge-w

[HJ99]

The scythe has me curious. Been watching bunch scythe videos. Way back in my youth somebody gave me an old scythe. I tried sharpening it with a file and totally clueless adjusting it to my body (most scythes made when people were shorter). Needless to say this was a painful experience and exhausting whacking at grass/weeds with it to no great effect. Cant remember what happened to the scythe, vaguely remember it stored in old shed that roof leaked and it rotted the snath. Knowing me though unless it got lost on moving, I probably saved the blade and hardware. Somewhere...

But watching all the videos, it has me convinced that yea you need it adjusted, but main thing is to have it razor sharp like a knife. Something I can do now since I taught myself to sharpen knives few years back. They have gotten pricey unless you luck into one at garage sale being sold as Halloween decoration. I remember at old farm auctions it was a dollar or two for one with blade and solid snath. Most with snath, the snath is not in best shape, long time since these were widely used tools. Now they get sold as antiques and decorations. And just new snath (the long handle) are now around $100 for aluminum or over $200 for good wood one. I found another video where somebody in India made a snath out of a sapling. Seemed to work fine, and certainly free is nice. I will waste an hour to save $100. Especially since I mostly want to experiment and see if I can make one cut like in the videos cause that is truly impressive. Found cheap vintage blade on Ebay, still more than I wanted to give, but sometimes cheaper to pay bit more than time and gas going looking for a true bargain. Says made in Austria on it, but its not the Austrian type design, they also made some of the American/English type blades for foreign markets. The American ones you sharpen like a knife, the true Austrian design, you hammer the edge to sharpen it, its bit softer metal but its super light weight. Both are honed similarly, you kinda have to give them a touch up out in the field with a sharpening stone every fifteen minutes or so. Oh something I didnt know, the American ones have a double bevel edge. My memory maybe getting hazy but I seem to remember scythes being single bevel. But guess the old blacksmith version was a sandwich of hard steel with layers softer steel surrounding it. Those you needed the double bevel as you wanted the cutting edge to be that hard steel in center and thus double bevel became tradition. I imagine most out there are just one piece stamped steel from factory and doesnt matter that much as long as the edge is thin and sharp. Be rare to find an old hand forged one where they were economizing on steel they used.