A long time ago, in the remote Soviet and tsarist times in Rus', hay was mowed with hand scythes. Much water has passed under the bridge since then. Various mowers, electric and gasoline trimmers have appeared. Individual farming in the form of cows, sheep and goats has ceased to be kept in the Russian village. My parents kept cattle in the village until about 2004-2005. People stopped buying milk from us: it’s cheaper in the store and it doesn’t go sour for a long time. It became unprofitable to keep a cow. Well, besides, age did not add optimism: keeping a cow is troublesome and difficult. The cow and goats were liquidated. But the braid remained. The garden plot must be mowed periodically. The mother was never able to adapt to modern technologies, and in the old fashioned way she mows her plot with a scythe. I, in turn, had to master the technology for repairing and maintaining this instrument, already rare in our village.
Braids can still be bought at hardware stores. But in order for it to mow, it must be prepared in a special way - beaten off. This means that the cutting edge of the braid must be flattened so that it becomes thinner, and therefore sharper.Previously, my father had a special workplace equipped for this next to the barn. During mowing, he beat off the braids almost every day in the evening before the morning mowing. Now this is not done so often, because there is no specially equipped place. The place I have is temporary, easily disassembled and assembled.
How to cut off a braid
First you need to take a stump, larger in diameter, preferably made of hard wood: I had oak in stock. We lightly hammer an ax into the middle of the stump, old or new, sharp or dull - it doesn’t matter. The ax will not be damaged after the procedure of beating off the scythes, and can be used further for its intended purpose. In principle, if you plan to beat off your braids often and a lot, there is a special device for this - a “headstock for beating off braids.” Now you can also buy it, or you can make it yourself from an old hammer. I also had a “grandmother,” but due to the fact that the need to cut off my braids occurs once or twice a year, she was lost. I bought a new one and lost it again. And then I came up with the idea of using an ax for this purpose; it is always at hand and is needed in work much more often.
The next step is to come up with a holder for the handle of the braid. In order for the braid to break correctly, its blade must lie flat on the headstock. For this purpose, I hung a load weighing 300-400 grams on a rope approximately 1.5 meters long in the barn doorway. You can use any piece of metal, stone, water bottle, etc. as a load. In my case, I used old brake pads from a car.
Next, we will equip a seat for our fifth point. I used scraps of wood for this. The following options come to mind: another stump, an iron bucket turned upside down, any stool, etc.And we install the braid as follows: the blade of the braid lies on the “headstock”, the end of the braid handle is fixed using a cord with a weight.
Now we can move on to the process of beating the braid. The blade of the braid, as I said earlier, should lie equally parallel to the surface of the headstock. We hold and guide the braid with our left hand. With our right hand we strike the cutting edge of the braid with the pointed part of the hammer in order to flatten it and make it thinner and sharper. It is necessary to avoid two defects: do not flatten the edge too much and make foil out of it, it will not last long, it will break off and the mow will be bad; and there is no need to allow the metal to crack; along the cracks, the edge will break off, and the cutting properties of the scythe will deteriorate.
Result
In the photo you can see what the braid looks like before beating and after beating. Immediately before mowing, the blade of the scythe must be straightened with a sharpening stone. During the mowing process, you should also periodically sharpen the scythe, carefully so as not to cut your fingers, after first clearing it of pieces of grass.
Even after beating, my father would put the scythe in a bath of water overnight. This was necessary so that it would not dry out, the holder of the braid would not become loose, and it would not dangle.
