I’ve been sent some photos from Michael Stibane in Germany of his peening station which his great-grandfather, who was a cartwright, produced and sold.
Peening is done on a flat anvil and by altering the string on the upright pole, the angle of the blade on the anvil can be altered. Peening with the scythe blade and snath attached is common where they are joined together using a simple collar and wedge. Fitting and securing them is more time consuming than with a modern collar so once the blade is set up correctly and fixed, they are kept together so as not to disturb the arrangement.
Michael says:
The can is for water. I learned, while peening, you have to apply water from time to time to the point of the blade you are peening. So I dip the hammer into water every ten or twenty strokes. Grandpa told me, it tempers the steel. Seems logic to me: hammer-steel-deformation-heat-water-tempering
.
As far as I know the peening station is not traditional for my area (Eastern Ore Mountains). Most of our people here have a flat anvil on a wooden stand with a peg. They stick it into the ground on a slope, sit down on the grass face to valley and start peening away with snath attached.
I’m not sure about the tempering theory for the water but I have seen knifemakers wet their hammer while forging which then gives the steel a ‘polished’ surface.
Follow the link to see all the photos, including measurements, of the peening station.
Michael also sent me a link to a Hay Camp taking place in the Eastern Ore mountains near Dresden July 6th – 22th 2012. If you go, please email me a report!
The first stage of sharpening a scythe is to peen the blade, drawing out the edge to thin it and give the right bevel angle. When you start out, the peening jig designed and made by Schroeckenfux along with Peter Vido is a good way to go; it’s quick to learn, relatively foolproof (but not without some care and attention) and will give consistent results. As your mowing progresses though you’ll start to see the limitations of the jig and want to learn to peen your scythe freehand with hammer and anvil. This will enable you to achieve a finer edge, different bevels for different vegetation and more control over the whole process.
When I started out peening, I cleaned up and handled an old carpenters hammer which served me well but wasn’t quite heavy enough. About a year ago I was visiting Gerhard Wagner in Austria and he explained that the hammer should be heavy enough to do the work simply from the force of letting it fall rather than actively ‘hitting’ the blade and suggested using hammer with a head weight of around 600g. There were a few other factors I wanted and, after a lot of searching I finally bought my new peening hammer earlier this year.
Made by Britool and sold as a riveting hammer, it has a nicely designed head with a rectangular cross-section at the flat face. It also has a cross-peen face and weighs in at 650g so ideal for peening. When it arrived I used some wet and dry paper to soften the sharp bevels at the edges of the flat face and shortened the handle so it’s now just 160mm long. To maintain accuracy and consistency in your peening it helps to tuck the elbow of your hammer hand into your side, restricting it’s movement. A longer handle prevents you doing this as it catches on your thigh and since you’re only using the hammer’s own weight, the extra leverage of a long handle isn’t necessary.
I’ve just been sent the dates for this year’s International Haymaking Festival in Transylvania. The fourth festival will take place on 19-26 August 2012 in Gyimes, Transylvania. 
If you need more convincing that the area is special and that mowing is for everyone, in May our future king (possibly) visited the project and had a go with a scythe. It turns out he’s been visiting the area for years and likes it so much that he has a home out there.
We’d been working hard all morning turning and raking down the hay and stacking it into pikes. It was a difficult morning, the heat was oppressive for us Brits and we struggled to understand Attila’s instructions on how he wanted us to be working. Once we’d finished, we returned to the courtyard tired and dirty. We ate an excellent meal prepared as always by Attila’s mother and girlfriend then settled down to relax for the rest of the day. Not half an hour later, Attila appeared and told us that he’d spotted his neighbours still working in the next field. There was no obligation, but he was going over to help and, if we wanted, we could join him to help them gather in their harvest before the coming thunder storm.
Off we went, half running up the lane with rakes and forks in hand while Attila shouted back that it was just like we’d been doing all morning, to work the same way. In the field we found the farmer with his son and daughter working to stack up a single pike while hay lay on the ground covering almost an half an acre of steep hillside. We set to work and suddenly everything fell into place and the confusions and irritations of the morning fell away, leaving an efficient haymaking team in its place. I could certainly feel the adrenalin running through me as we raced to beat the weather while lightning crashed around us. Everyone found unknown reserves of energy which at times came out as whoops of joy which were echoed back by others.
