According to the date on the clinker the Scythe Maker’s House was built in 1600, when it belonged to the prince’s Upper Ironworks. When the ironworks closed down the building was purchased and enlarged by the scythe maker Jan Michal Hartel, who also made wire and tools there. Apart form a few short periods, the building belonged to the Hartl family until 1812, i.e. until the Scythe Maker’s House was sold to Jan Heinrich, the ranger of the Teutonic Order. In 1845 the ownership of the Scythe Maker’s House was transferred to Josefa Langrová, the owner of the neighbouring mill. In 1898 the site passed into the hands of the miller Anton Frank, who also rented it out (in 1921 the building was home to the families of a wheelwright, a sawmill hand and a coachman). The Frank family owned the Scythe Maker’s House until 1945, when it was signed over to Josef and Jarmila Pelánový. In 1974 the building was bought by the District Regional History Museum in Bruntál, which planned to use it as a recreation facility for its employees, although its exceptional structural and heritage value predestined it to be a museum with exhibitions of rural housing and forestry. The housing exhibition on the ground floor consists of an apartment – life tenancy flat, containing a bedroom and living room, with the forester's household upstairs with a study, bedroom, kitchen and grandmother's room. The forestry exhibitions, presenting forest cultivation and protection and the history of forestry, are situated on the 2nd floor of the building.
The former Scythe Maker’s House in Karlovice is unique in terms of its architecture, shape and layout. The other buildings to have been preserved at the site are a brick shed, and a barn built onto the granary. This contains exhibitions of farming tools and implements that give a clear picture of life and work in the village in the past, as well as a herb attic. The site also includes a garden.