Scythe's, Snathe's , Sneads, and Stuff

[rusty]

The scythe, without the blade is the Snath
The snath without the handles is a Snead
The handle on the sneed which make it a snath so it can become a scythe
is a  Thole.

Go ahead, say that three times fast...

The snath wrench, which should really be a Thole wrench
on this scythe, is #7 (Dunno if this wrench or scythe was ever
 made tho, the drawing is from patent #144,  in 1837.

[Wrenchmensch]

Having only slight knowledge of very little, I confess my belief that a snath wrench was used to tighten the nuts and bolts attaching the scythe blade to the snath.  Is that secular belief sound?

[Bus]

The 1837 patent nomenclature is hard to decipher but it seems like:
Snead =  the main wooden shaft (what I would call the handle) (Fig. 1)
Nib or thole iron =  the iron brackets that attach the small handles (nib or thole woods) to the snead (Fig 1-a, Fig.2 and Fig.  4)
Snath = the snead (handle) with all it's parts (Fig. 1)
Fig.1-B is the ring used to fasten the scythe to the snath
Fig. 7 is a wrench.

Late 1800's and early 1900's catalogs lists the snath as the iron part that fastens the blade to the handle (snead). See an earlier post with a picture of  my salesman sample snath with wrench mounted on a partial handle.

http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=169.msg1053#msg1053





The 1837 patent would be one of the first numbered patent to show an auxiliary wrench after the unnumbered patents showing auxiliary wrenches: No. 6,338X issued Jan. 12, 1831 and No. 9,474X issued Mar. 04, 1836. The first known patent for a wrench is 6,271X issued Dec. 14, 1830.

This 1837 patent is not on  DATAMP yet, rest of the patents above are listed.   

The complete 1837 patent can be seen at Google Patents:

http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=patent:144&num=10

[Donny B.]

There are a lot of new words there for me. but I can't even use a scythe properly so its unlikely that I am going to remember all that fancy nomenclature. Still it is handy information so I shall tuck it away in a file for future reference.

[Wrenchmensch]

Last Tuesday, at Bible Study, I heard the story of two older men in Indiana County, PA who were employed as a township's full-time "maintainers" (Iowa usage).  These fellows spread cinders on road ice in the winter, and kept the grass and other roadside plants down in warm weather. They used scythes to do this latter job. These fellows did this job in the early 1940s. Some PA Amish with small holdings still use scythes and grain sickles.

[Stoney]

Here are some of my snath or now I'm confused is it thole wrenches.