Methods for Peening a Scythe

T

thunderstick

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Jan 15, 2007
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I've looked over a number of different tutorials on peening ... most of them relate to currently sold peening anvils and hammers. In addition to peening on the special scythe peening anvils, does anyone peen on a standard anvil? If so what are your techniques? How did farmers typically peen American scythes years ago--on a special scythe anvil or on a standard one?
 
thunderstick said:
I've looked over a number of different tutorials on peening ... most of them relate to currently sold peening anvils and hammers. In addition to peening on the special scythe peening anvils, does anyone peen on a standard anvil? If so what are your techniques? How did farmers typically peen American scythes years ago--on a special scythe anvil or on a standard one?
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American scythes are ground, not peened. Peening a hard American blade not only risks cracking it, but also causes issues in cases where the blade is laminated--which many were, back in the day. Only European pattern scythes were intended to be peened. I had a guy send a blade to me once that had belonged to his grandfather and "the tip snapped off shortly after I started using it"...well go figure...when it got to me I could clearly see the guy tried peening it, and that's almost certainly what snapped his tip off.

If peening a European blade or an overly soft American blade you are absolutely certain is whole steel rather than laminated then you'd place the blade on top of the flat anvil face as if the anvil were the ground (so face-up) and use a cross pein (preferably angled like an actual peening hammer) with a smooth face to draw out the edge.
 
As far as what American farmer using European style blades were using for peening, the Pennsylvania Dutch used peening anvils (denglestocks) that looked something like this one:

denglestock0502.jpg
 
This is what would happen if you attempted to peen a laminated blade.

DontPeenAmericanBlades.png
 
Thanks for the help there. I couldn't recall my Grandpa ever peening a scythe. He died when I was 12. He used to have me cut the grass around the farm with a sickle and scythe. He used a foot pedal water wheel stone to sharpen a lot of his tools. I never did buy either his sickle or scythe but I got 2 of his nice old axes.

I did try peening mine on a standard flat anvil and noticed that it didn't improve anything significantly. I was also worried about peening on an edge anvil and breaking the edge.

I should have read the scythe thread through as I found you did discuss this for American blades.

Let me confirm things in "general" way:
1. American scythes are not "typically" peened
2. American scythes can be sharpened on both sides to center the edge
3. European scythes are typically softer and peened
4. European scythes are to be beveled on one side only

I'm thinking though on a scythe or sickle I would only moderately bevel the underside
 
^Yup.

As some further exposition, the term "European" or "Euro" should be taken as shorthand for "Continental European". As Lieblad noted, English and Nordic (Finland technically not being part of Scandinavia) blades are conventionally ground like American blades are, and--similarly--were often laminated.
 
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