Saxon Peening Station

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.

peening bench

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!

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Peening hammer

peening scythe bladeThe 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.

I talked in an earlier post about setting up your peening station so now I thought I’d mention a piece of the kit that is often overlooked – the hammer.
With the jig, the hammer isn’t contacting with the blade so any hammer will do. In freehand peening, the anvil and hammer are two parts of the same tool; equally important and useless on their own. The face of each should be kept clean, polished and free from dents otherwise these marks will be imprinted along your scythe edge with each blow. If you’re at a scythe festival and looking for a hammer, you’ll struggle to find someone who’ll lend you their’s. Too many of us have seen them ruined by denting the face by using it for hammering nails or on the cap of a jig.

peening hammerWhen 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.

peening hammersMade 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.

The faces of this hammer are nicely domed and I’m enjoying using it, both with the flat face and with the cross-peen face on a flat anvil.

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Transylvania Haymaking Festival dates & Scythe royalty

Haystack buildingI’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. Last year’s festival was a wonderful week and the event grows and improves  year. Hosted by a local farming family and the Pogány-havas Association this is an opportunity to mow some of the most species-rich hay meadows in Europe and learn about how to make hay and build the beautiful, iconic haystacks that you can see throughout the region. The work helps to bring income to the region, highlighting and aiding the work to preserve these meadows.

To book a place, contact Barbara Knowles a british biologist and science policy adviser to the Society of Biology, UK who works with the  Pogány-havas Association. Visit her Treasures of Transylvania website for more on the  region.

Prince Charles with scytheIf 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.

He needs to bend his knees more though. And get the blade on the ground.

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Woman mowing wheat

It’s unusual to see old pictures of women mowing so this great photo merits it’s own post.  Note that she’s holding the snath by the shaft it’s made for someone taller than her and there’s no cradle or bow on the scythe so the girl gathering will be tidying the sheaves as she collects.

 

Woman mowing wheat, Germany

Woman mowing wheat with a scythe in Hesslar, Germany, August 1, 1946.
Photo: Walter Sanders, from http://www.toseftaonline.org/blog/

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Austrian Scythe Association end of year dinner

I’m in Austria this week and have just attended the Sensenverein Osterreich (Austrian Scythe Association) end of year dinner which Christiane Lechner and I were invited to by Walter Blumauer.
sensenverein logo
The association has 220 members of which 31 turned out to enjoy the dinner and hear reports by chairman Hansjörg Rinner and treasurer Walter Blumauer. This year 19 courses were run with the members also attending and demonstrating at 14 other events. An interesting development is that the running of the scythe shop has been handed over to Silvanus, a company which deals principally with forestry equipment. This will be in conjunction with the association, who advise on products and take a commission from sales. This year 500 scythes were sold.

Hansjörg also unveiled the new peening jig which has been developed along with the Schroeckenfux scythe works. Although the current peening jig is a good tool for shaping the scythe blade edge it has some shortcomings and this new model will shortly replace it. We were lucky enough to be sitting at the same table as Adolf Staufer and Hubert Weingartner who both worked their whole lives in scythe production and are hugely knowledgeable. I enjoyed watching how they both examined the new jig and discussed it’s design with Adolf. I hope to get my hands on one to try out and review.

Scythe teachers in Austria all go through a training and assessment programme run by the Sensenverein. This is quite a testing process with teachers expected to have a high skill level and be able so set up and use the huge number of different snath-blade combinations which exist in Austria. This year 7 new teachers were trained, mostly from Germany and South Tirol. During my brief conversation with Hansjörg Rinner we talked about teaching mowing and he expressed his interest in me being the first englishman to take this training.

Erwin Zachl

Erwin Zachl

After the reports we enjoyed a couple of short films made during the year of a scythe course and an event attended by the association, Erwin Zachl was given an award in recognition of running 9 scythe courses himself and  we then had a selection of traditional xmas songs  played on a quartet of dulcimers. Printed song sheets were provided so we could join in but as these were written in phonetic Austrian it was still a challenge for me!

With the Scythe Association (Britain & Ireland) in it’s fledgling days, it’s interesting to look to the Sensenverein which has been running since 2005 in a country with a strong, ongoing tradition of scythe use. I hope to establish links between the two organisation so see how we might learn from their experiences and help each other to promote the use of the scythe.

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Koseni 2011 Czech Republic – pictures

The pictures from this years mowing fortnight in the Czech Republic are now online here. Great memories for me of the week that Christiane and I spent there, mowing and making hay with the other volunteers in a special conservation area with breathtaking scenery. Read the full post about the our mowing week at the 31st Kosení in Czech Republic.

Here’s a small selection:

koseni 2011 Mirek, Koseni organiser Christiane & Steve mowing at Koseni 2011

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Where do you peen?

When I was living out in the sticks of North Devon, peening my scythe was never a problem. The nearest neighbours lived over a mile away and I could hammer away to my heart’s content. Now I live in a terraced house on the edge of town and I’ve got to be a bit more aware of how much everyone else will want to hear the repetitive sound of hammer on steel.

During the summer, Christiane and I were looking for a way for us both to peen together; partly just because we enjoy working together and also so we could work more quickly through the pile of blades we were preparing for a course.

After a bit of thought, we took a walk through the woods behind where I live, found a fallen tree and fitted the peening anvils into the trunk. Very solid and stable, the tree made a perfect base for peening and it was a lovely setting to be in among the woods with the light coming through the leaves. A few dog walkers came over to investigate so we also got a chance to spread the word about the scythe renaissance as well.

Peening in the woods

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Hay rescue in Transylvania

During the summer, Christiane Lechner and I set off for the far east of Romania to attend the International Haymaking festival at Gyimes in the White Carpathain mountains of Transylvania. During the week we learned a huge amount about haymaking, building haystacks and the local culture but for me the highlight of the week wasn’t even on the programme.

Rolling hayWe’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.

building a hay pikeOff 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.

We finished just as the rain started, shook hands with the farmer and headed back to the shelter of the courtyard barn, still fizzing with excitement and telling stories of the adventure. Attila’s father brought out his fiddle, Tom picked up his accordion and five minutes later the neighbours arrived with a crate of beer to thank us for our help. Attila said they’d resigned themselves to only saving a small part of the hay and were amazed to see us arrive and how well ‘the English’ could work’! Attila himself was rightly proud and it helped give credibility to his project.

With music and beer we passed the rest of the afternoon drinking, talking and learning traditional dances from the local boys, flushed with the feeling of tired satisfaction.

haymakers' dance hay dance

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“Mowing” by Robert Frost

Winter time and the mowing season is well and truly over in my neck of the woods, hence the smaller number of posts (why not check out my green woodwork blog SteveTomlinCrafts which gets more active in the autumn and winter – life is seasonal).

This part of the year gives me more time to think about mowing and research scythes, haymaking and cereal harvesting which I enjoy almost as much as actually working with the scythe. From time to time it turns up some gems, like this poem by Robert Frost.

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

And that was why it whispered and did not speak.

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Robert Frost

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Apple Day 2011

Update 12/10/11: Unfortunately the National Trust today contacted me to say they have cancelled this year’s event due to the recent rain and condition of the fields.

On Sunday 16th Oct I’ll be at Acorn Bank near Penrith for their Apple Day fair. Last year I had a fanstastic time talking about scythes and mowing and hayrakes so this time I’ve arranged to do a mowing demonstration as well as having some of my greenwood work for sale. Hopefully despite the recent weather there will be some decent grass and I’ll convince a few more people to leave the strimmer in the shed and start enjoying cutting the grass.

Acorn Bank Garden
Temple Sowerby
Penrith
Cumbria
CA10 1SP

Date: 16 October 2011

Time: 11am – 4.30pm

Cost: Adult £6, Child £3, Family £15 (including National Trust members)

Get directions

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