June 27, 2026

I was delighted to found this rusty old sickle in my allotment while I was clearing it out the other day. I've been wanting a sickle for a while. I love old fashioned manual tools because I think they work so well and things used to be much more cleverly and efficiently engineered, because you had to rely on mechanical man power not machine power. 

Anyway, it was so exciting finding it. I researched how to fix it up and consulted my brother on making the handle. First I sanded away the rust on the blade as much as I could. I then went to see my brother in his garage workshop and he gave me a block of spare oak (thank you!). He cut it to the rough right size i.e. around 2.5cm square sides.

Then I took it home and used a hand plane to shave off the corners, making the square into an octagon. Then continued shaving corners to get as close to circular as possible. Then I switched to sand paper to smooth out the final corner angles into a circular shape. et voila from square to circle.

Then I need to put the metal arm of the sickle into the wooden handle somehow... I drilled a hole through the entire length of the handle. I had saved the wood shavings and dust from earlier planing and sanding activities. Then fit the metal arm into the hole and created a glue / shaving mix to stuff down the sides of the hole to close it up.

I'm probably not explaining it well and I forgot to take pictures along the way, but it worked out so well. 

I finished by sharpening the blade using a whetstone, and sealing the wood handle with some wood wax and that was it! Obsessed with how it turned out. I've tried it out on some long grass already and works great. It's probably a relatively dangerous tool so you need to use it carefully.

Total Likes: 0

Comments

---

No comments yet.

---