The Peening Anvils of the Pennsylvania Dutch

Not only did the Pennsylvania Dutch or "Deutsch", have good taste in scythe blades, they also had some world-class peening anvils, for the times, to sharpen them with. As proof that there has been a long tradition, of use of the "Austrian" scythe, in this country, these anvils are plentiful in and around Pennsylvania Dutch Pennsylvania. While all the blades seem to have been imported, these scythe anvils were hand-forged here in the USA, over a 100 years ago, out of wrought iron with a bit of hard steel inserted for the anvil face. The Pennsylvania Deutsch called them "Dengelstocks", but in their homeland Germany, the word dengelstock means the stump or base that the anvil is set in for peening, which is called "dengeln", in German. We would classify it as a tall scythe anvil. Tall anvils were usually used on large stumps that the person peening, could sit on as well. the anvil was tall enough for the seated person to get their legs underneath the blade. Most of them seem to be narrow anvils, but I have a seen some examples of wide dengelstocks in my collection. I like to point out that the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually Deutsch or German, because this is a very southern German or Bavarian-style of anvil.

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Some of the anvil are beautiful examples of the craftsmanship of the blacksmiths. In this close-up photo, you can see that the anvil face is a hardened steel "bit", set into the wrought iron body of the anvil. Back in the 1800's, wrought iron was cheap and steel was expensive, so it is thought that anvils were made this way for economy's sake. That may be a major part of the reason, but I think another was that the anvil face needed to be harder than the metal of the scythe blade, hence the steel insert, but the body of anvil could be the softer wrought iron, because it would dampen the shocks of the hammer strikes, and lessen the rebound, so more energy would theoretically go into moving the metal of the edge of the blade.

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