Yeah--tell me about it. I even know that you aren't supposed to peen American blades but had had good success repairing a wrinkled edge on a Maine-made bush blade with careful and gentle peening. The TrueTemper in question had a drooping toe which would have predisposed it towards burying the point in the dirt. Since it was a Dutch pattern weed blade I didn't think the heat treatment would be so frickin' hard but I got a nice little spiderweb right past where the trough of the spine ran out. I cut the blade down and it still works great even if it's a little ugly, but now I know to be careful with TrueTempers!
Gotta' love the heel on a good Dutch pattern blade, though, and that's just fine.
Peter Vido asked me to post this for him:
Now, 42blades, I hope you won't mind several friendly 'corrections' while still on this subject.
1.The fact that your True Temper blade developed 'spider cracks' is not yet a proof of it being un-peenable; all it may speak of is your peening skill...
Furthermore, IF what you were trying to accomplish was to 'lift the point', we ought to clarify some terminology first. When the scythe folks talk of peening they have in mind the cold-shaping of the scythe blade's
edge. Nothing more.
There are several other
cold hammering steps in a scythe blade making process that are very
unlike peening . One of them is referred to as 'making adjustments' to the "Verlauf" (I don't know the English equivalent) of the whole blade. In the industry's jargon this (in German) is the task of the so-called "Richter".
The 'Richter' can lift (or lower) the point of a blade by 1/2" or more, very quickly, by a few relatively hard blows of his 3+ lb. hammer. But these blows are along the back rib, NOT the blade's body proper, and have nothing to do with what is generally referred to as 'peening' of scythe blades..
2. Though I share your apparent intent "to improve the present state of affairs", I think you are squandering your time/energy by trying to have Seymour make any changes on present blade design. For one thing, the Seymour company has not turned out a scythe blade for at least 40+ years. Whether they
ever did, I do not know (the history of American scythe industry is not my specialty). What I do know is that several Austrian companies have supplied them with blades for a very long time. While it is true that a 'good' customer (one who orders a large number) can ask for a change in the technical specs of a product, or have the factory make a fundamentally new blade designed to customer's wishes, it would take many guys like yourself (and far more American scythe demand) to move Seymour to do so.
Hey, it had taken me
years (12 to be exact) to inspire a few significant changes within the scythe industry (both in blade/snath design as well as edge finishing) -- and I'm not quite there yet... At that, I've made 20+ trips to Austria and
demonstrated my notions to the few 'insiders' who actually
used the tool. We mowed together, discussed the concepts, made prototypes and tested them, re-discused the issues, etc. All that
eventually led to
some changes...
3. As for your guess that the hot stamp on X's old blade indicates a Seymour product -- it's definitely not so. This (in German referred to as "Blume", meaning 'flower') is an old trademark of the Austrian scythe industry. Schrokenfux (one of the last two outfits still making blades in that country) has the official right to it now, and some blades sold in USA and Canada sport that stamp still. Seymour has simply been one of the (numerous) dealers selling that trademark.
As you know, labels -- be they stuck on or hot stamped -- are only a partial indication as to where the tool was actually made. Long before the GATT agreements were put into place, some tool companies made products name-designated 'to order' (by the buyer) -- which meant that other-than-the-maker's name was sometimes hot-stamped on the tool. It is more the case nowadays than it ever was... with scythes as well as other blades,
including axes!
4. On the subject of The Scythe Book -- the sort of a bible on this topic within the English speaking world -- I agree with you,
somewhat, but only somewhat...
David was, I believe, truly passionate about the scythe, and (as a PhD in psychology) knew how to write about it with flair. He did some research and came up with a sum of 'scythe facts' of which a portion were flawed, some more than others.
The biggest single mistake he made regarding the American scythe blades was to refer to the bulk of them as 'hard' and 'stamped' -- which the vast majority of them were not. This statement, unfortunately, has spread like wildfire and keeps being reiterated -- depreciatively -- by other authors on the subject.
However, I'd like to temper your statement "don't believe....". In many respects I do share David's opinion on the virtues of the American versus the 'European' (not necessarily Austrian) scythe. A tool to accomplish the same task North Americans had at hand
could have been designed along more convivial lines. But such is the story of human learning... sometimes we do well, sometimes we don't.
That said, if some of you Americans feel affinity for this continent's scythe traditions (including the use of the typical snaths and the grinding of the blades), so be it. As long as you keep the blades "whispering through the grass" I applaud your efforts! I further encourage the restoring of ANY scythe blades (even the rusty ones from '40 feet up in the rafters') because I believe they will one day be again appreciated for the purpose they were made for.
As an ax-forum-deserved side note, where the Americans were asleep, in my view, regarding good scythe design, they made up for in the realm of axes. As you can read
here (on head geometry) and
here (on ax handles), I consider many of the American axes representing the epitome in ax design.
Both of these tools deserve to be re-vitalized. The scythe 'renaissance' of a sort is now in progress, though more evident in countries other than USA or Canada; the Brits actually have us beat by a long shot, and so do the Danes.
A question to the members of this ax forum: Where does the ax stand in this regard? To be specific, are there more trees cut down, limbed and processed by means of an ax this year than was the case last year? Or are more axes merely collected, restored and hung on the wall?...
Thank you for initiating a discussion about the scythe and other simple, useful tools. While I personally have no experience using a scythe, I am intrigued by them and hope to follow up on some of the references and links provided here.
