I bought a scythe today

As far as I understand, the apocrophal 5 acres in a day was done by one man for a wager, but he did it with two scythes and two helpers doing the honing and peening so he just did mowing only.

I still have a hard time with all this talk of peening. We never did that. The only thing that ever touched the blade was grandpa's stone. You must be cutting through woody brush or hitting rocks. And this comes from 10 years of my memory of my grandparents and us putting up hay that I can remember and doing it all by hand. Never once was there any peening done.

I would say that between grandpa and I we would cut 7 acres in a day. Grandpa probably cut 6 of those at that time. The man was a machine, even with a previously broken back. When you first start out, you will find muscles that you did not know were there.

We had the old curved wooden handle ones. I remember riding on top of the stack of hay on the back of the truck and having to lay flat on it so that I could make it under the cross bar on the driveway and grandpa having to get the extension ladder so dad and I could get down. We were a good 20 feet in the air because grandpa could really throw a fork full of hay. Funny thing was he had his scythe and his pitch fork. All the other forks had 4 tines and his had 5. No one touched his pitchfork.

By your description the reason you don't understand the peening concept is because you used american style scythes. European blades are hammerd out they are thin yet strong but they are rather easy to nick. The American style blades are stamped out of steel and finished with a grind stone, they are much heavier, I don't think peening would even be an option.

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The best of men is only a man at best.

Scythes were used when a 5 acre field was one heck of a field. There were 100 times more fields with different AND smaller acreages that were too small for row crops, but could be used for hay and grain. When mowers first came out, they were from 3 to 5ft cut, and one guy could do to 5 acres in a day what 5 to 10 scythe men could do in the same time. Gradually as farms changed hands and younger people came to own them, more and more mowers came into use, and the fields, where it was able became larger, and scytheing became less and less used.

My scythe has a fairly soft blade. I bought their 'heavy' brush blade, instead of the light grain straw blade.

I have seen that cutting through wild berry brambles and small saplings I have dinged the blade a few times. Dings need to be peened. Just the nature of the device.

But had I stuck to only using it for straw it would have only needed the stone.

I live in dense forest with some swamp. The stuff that grows up here wild, and needs to be trimmed back, is much sturdier stuff than if I lived on open flat plain with grain crops.

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http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

My great grandfather was superintendent for the Delaware canal, my pappy worked on the bank gang in the 20's and he said they used to mow the canal w/ scythes and would have an anvil and hammer w/ them but each man carried a stone in a cup on his belt.

He was gettin' on my dad for using a 8 mill bastard file on an Austrian grass blade. We used them mostly for trim work on weed lots we cut w/ a walk behind sickle bar and sharpened sickle & scythe with the file.

They used shot heavy blades for woody brush, I still have one at the cabin. Woody growth will split a grass blade.