Old tools such a treasure.
You could try to rub the wood with sand paper and oil the handles with timber oil.Your local hardware store should be able to help you.
Depending on how much rust is on the blades you could try to use some steel wool.
Please be very careful when swinging either of them nothing worse than cutting yourself or someone else with a rusty blade.
Best of luck can I ask which market you were at?

G'day Gill

What a great find
Hang onto it, our heritage needs to be held
Buy some linseed oil from the hardware and mix with turps to the ratio of 3:1.
The blade, hone down with fine wet and dry paper and then use a fine oil to keep the rust off. I was going to suggest WD40 but that was not around when this item was made.

Gill,,
I use a scythe as an everyday grass cutter. I agree with the above advice about restoring the handle (I find 50/50 linseed oil and turps is a great mix on old wood).

BUT, as for the blade itself, it's not just a matter of grinding it to an edge as you would with a knife. Sharpening a scythe used to be a blacksmith's job and is a bit fiddly.

You need to lay the sharp edge on an anvil or similar, and using a pein hammer, beat the edge gently, all along, until it's wafer thin and about 1cm wide. Then use a metal file to remove burrs and give it a razor sharp edge. When using the scythe, you need to "touch up" (sharpen) the edge every 15 minutes or so with a sharpening stone. The hammering bit only needs doing about every 5 hours of use.

Maybe better to restore the scythe and hang it on the wall as a beautiful artifact!

Regards,

Shax

You could try removing the bulk of the rust with CLR and steel wool, but make sure you wear gloves. You can buy this stuff at Big W and Target, and it's very useful for getting rid of rust and lime deposits etc.

PP