Reaping hook

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A reaping hook, or sickle, is a handheld agricultural tool featuring a curved blade commonly used for cutting grain crops and succulent forage to feed livestock. Throughout history, numerous regional variants of this basic forage-cutting tool have been forged from iron and steel. In the industrial era, when trip hammers replaced blacksmiths at the anvil (16th to 17th century), sickles were produced in up to six different sizes. Sickle edges come in two designs: smooth or serrated; both can be used for cutting green grass or mature cereals, but serrated sickles dominate grain harvesting. Modern kitchen knives and grain-harvesting machines share the same design principle as prehistoric sickles.