John Holladay writes:

> Do you fellows have any suggestions as to the most effective method to 
> do
> this peening to lock in that little steel piece on the butt of the 
> handle?

Just before Christmas a friend asked me to rehabilitate an old Estwing 
geologist's hammer (a la the movie "Shawshank? Redemption" but 
considerably larger than the movie version).  It was intended to be a 
present for my friend's brother.  After rust removal and cleaning off 
the numerous paint spots which bespangled the stacked leather handle 
came the matter of tightening the loose (shrunken?) leather washers 
forming the handle. The washers were relatively intact to the extent 
that they did not require replacing although they needed to be re-shaped 
a little, burnished and polished after tightening.

There was the real prospect that the metal shank leading to the hammer's 
head or the tang above it would be bent or otherwise distorted if the 
head was placed on an anvil and the peened end of the tang, protruding 
through the metal end-cap, given a smack with a hammer.

The most simple thing to do seemed to be to treat the peening of the 
tang's end in the same, counter-intuitive way that an axe's handle is 
driven into the axe's head.

I held the hammer suspended, head down, with my hand on the lower part 
of the leather section and struck the top of the tang with a relatively 
light peening hammer.  Although my left arm (I am right-handed) gave 
under each hammer stroke, the inertia of the head of the workpiece was 
sufficient to permit the top of the tang to be peened further.  All it 
took was about half a dozen peening strokes to take up what had 
previously been a little less than 1/16"  of movement of the handle's 
washers.  I would caution against delivering a too-enthusiastic or 
prolonged peening in this fashion as it is very effective to the extent 
that, in the job described, a washer, less resilient than its fellows, 
was compressed beyond its alignment with the rest of the handle and had 
to be brought back into alignment before final burnishing and polishing 
could be undertaken.

I am pretty sure that new leather washers can be fitted to John's knife 
to maintain a bit of a friction-hold on the tang until, with light 
blows, the top of the tang is sufficiently peened to prevent its being 
driven through the metal end-cap, whereafter the force of the blows may 
be increased a bit to speed up the tightening of the handle.

Clearly, the inertia of a knife blade held suspended is less than that 
of the head of a hammer or an axe and, off the top of my head, I would 
suggest that greater inertia be imparted to the blade by  attaching a 
heavy set of Vise-Grips to it during the peening process.

Regards from Brisbane,

John Manners 

------------------------------------------------------------------------