Bagging Hook

A bagging hook or badging hook (also spelled in some maker's catalogues as fagging hook) is a large sickle or reaping hook (also known as a reap hook or a rip hook) tool, usually with an offset handle so that the user's knuckles do not make contact with the ground.

It was primarily used for harvesting grain in Britain. The blade is heavier than that of the sickle and sharpened, whereas most sickles had serrated blades. It is usually about 1.5" (40 mm) wide with an open crescent shaped blade approx 18" (450mm) across. It superseded the sickle in most parts of Britain during the mid to late 19th century, and was in turn replaced by the scythe and later the reaping machine (reaper binder: the forerunner of the Combine Harvester).

However, it was still widely used at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century for opening a field of corn, i.e. cutting a narrow width all around the edge of the field to allow the reaper to start work. It was also used when the corn was bent over or flattened and the mechanical reaper unable to cut without causing the grain to fall from the ears, thus wasting the crop.

It was also used in lieu of the bean hook or pea hook for cutting field beans and other legumeous crops that were used for fodder and bedding for livestock.

Occasionally confused with the billhook, and similar tools used for cutting wood or laying hedges – while the blade was heavy enough to remove young growth (i.e. in lieu of shears for clipping a hedge) it was not strong enough to cut woody material, and the stronger (but similarly shaped), and longer handled, staff hook would have been used. Many variations in blade shape were used in different part of England. Its close relations in shape and usage are the grass hook and the reap hook.

The Oxford dictionary gives the definition of the word to bag (or badge) as cutting of grain by hand.