1SR Falci 100, in "Botan Blue", 85cm, 50mm wide, 603g, This blade has a fully-formed belly and rocker, to handle bumpier fields, like my favorite Penn. Dutch Redtenbacher blade. I asked Falci to reproduce my favorite Redtenbacher blade in 85cm, and they said there was no need to. This one is similar, they said, and will probably mow better! So there you go. This blade is awesome. A strong, stiff, well-formed, and balanced blade. The form of the blade is more like a cross between my Gartensense blades and the FUX 2010 or Profisense. It doesn't have as much of a hook in front, as the 2010, making it easier for beginners to use, and requires less twisting of the torso in the full field stroke, which I prefer. I like using a lot of lateral motion in my scythe stroke. Only double peened, but to a thinly tapered bevel that runs easily over the nail, in the thumbnail test. I finally got to really put it through it's paces this fall, and shoot some video of it in action. See the three videos below:

The farmers at New Story Farm called me up, and said they needed a scythe asap, to mow some green feed for their beef cows. Their last pasture was exhausted, and their newly seeded pastures weren't ready to withstand being trampled by the herd yet, but could be mowed. Sounded like fun to me, so I personally delivered their scythe, and showed them how to mow and helped them harvest some green feed.  http://www.newstoryfarm.com/

On August 9th, 2014, I had the great pleasure to teach an all-day One Scythe Revolution Scythe Workshop at Spirit Mountain Farm in Duluth, MN. What a gorgeous place! 

At the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, in the valley of Saurat, is the last quarry and factory for making natural whetstones, still in operation in France. Established in the early 1900s by the Cuminetti family, this operation was taken over in 2006 by Mr. Soucille of Thiers. The fine grain and mineralogical purity of the schistose sandstone of this quarry, allows for the manufacturing of a complete range of sharpening tools, from stone nail files to grinding wheels. And luckily for us, they still make scythe stones! In the video below Mr. Soucille takes us on a tour of the quarry and factory where these whetstones are produced.

The first time I gave the scythe any thought as a potentially useful tool for me, was while watching an episode of Elliot Coleman's cable TV show called Gardening Naturally. (See 17:25) He said that the scythe that had come to this country, was the "English" (aka American, or Anglo-American) scythe. It had grips that pointed to the front. But, he said the style that he preferred was what he called the "Swiss or German" style of scythe (aka "Austrian"), with the grips pointing toward you. I started out with the style that Elliot recommended. The first time I ever laid eyes on one these "English" scythes, was at the 2006 International Scythe Symposium, where Peter Vido brought out what he called "THE BEAST", as an example of the "perpetuation of a bad idea in snath design". "The Beast" was a surprisingly thick and heavy, and curvy Anglo-American style snath.   

Not only did the Pennsylvania Dutch or "Deutsch", have good taste in scythe blades, they also had some world-class peening anvils, for the times, to sharpen them with. As proof that there has been a long tradition, of use of the "Austrian" scythe, in this country, these anvils are plentiful in and around Pennsylvania Dutch Pennsylvania. While all the blades seem to have been imported, these scythe anvils were hand-forged here in the USA, over a 100 years ago, out of wrought iron with a bit of hard steel inserted for the anvil face. The Pennsylvania Deutsch called them "Dengelstocks", but in their homeland Germany, the word dengelstock means the stump or base that the anvil is set in for peening, which is called "dengeln", in German. We would classify it as a tall scythe anvil. Tall anvils were usually used on large stumps that the person peening, could sit on as well. the anvil was tall enough for the seated person to get their legs underneath the blade. Most of them seem to be narrow anvils, but I have a seen some examples of wide dengelstocks in my collection. I like to point out that the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually Deutsch or German, because this is a very southern German or Bavarian-style of anvil.

The gorgeous scythe blade above, was made for export to the USA, by the Redtenbacher scythe factory, of Austria. Redtenbacher was the largest scythe factory in the world, at the time. It finally closed it's scythe production in 1987, due to the huge decline in demand, with the rise of mechanized agriculture. One of it's factory buildings was turned into a scythe museum; the Geyerhammer Scythe Museum. It has three heavy water-wheels, and shows 400 years of scythe blade making history. It is now popular tourist destination. The Scharnstein castle ruins nearby, also add to it's attraction. See http://www.sensenmuseum.at/ 
 At it's high point, the Redtenbacher Scythe factory produced a 120 different models of scythe blades, and sold to over 90 different counties, including the USA.  Each model was produced in 2-6 different lengths. They produced a brand of scythes labeled Schwanen Sense, and several models were exported to the United States, and they were especially popular with the Pennsylvania Dutch here. I know that the model above was produced in 70-75-80cm lengths. 

Just got these peening guides back from our local machine shop. I spent many hours over the past couple of weeks, in hardware stores trying out all kinds of combinations of aluminum bars, and nuts, bolts, washers, and spacers, until I finally came up with a combination and design that worked. Then I had a local machine shop cut the aluminum pieces, router out the slots, drill and thread the screw hole, and chamfer all the edges. They did a beautiful job. The finished product is sleek, and works wonderfully.