no, not the parachute pants man... striking tools.
Recently there was a bit of discussion on the fine art of peening.
One of the problems I believe many people face is not using the right tools for the job.
First you need a good SOLID backstop to place the work against.
Admittedly we are working on a smaller scale, but you don't see a blacksmith pounding away on a lightweight piece of metal clamped in a vice. He uses a large steel anvil for a reason.
You want the energy from your hammer blow to stop in the workpiece, not transfer right through and fly out like the ball on the other end of a "Newton's Cradle".
your bucking bar / dolly / riveting block / anvil, call it what you like, needs to be many times the weight of your hammer.
To peen the "head" on pins, I put the rod in the chuck of my cordless drill with about 5mm sticking out and peen it with the drill running. It makes it easier to get an even head on the pin.
To do the "tail" once the knife is assembled I cut the pin about 1 to 1.5mm longer than flush and work around the edge with the ball end of the hammer to start the edge rolling over and finish up with the flat face.
One of the advantages of using a small hammer is that it is easier to get only the end of the pin to expand. Too heavy a strike and the pin will expand into the pivot holes in the tools resulting in stiff joints and lack of snap.
Speaking of the weight of your hammer... just as most people have too light a backing block, they use too heavy a hammer (just talking about SAK pins here).
You will be able to have more control with a light hammer than a heavy one. and I'm talking small here. The smallest hammer I had in my toolbox was 4oz. I remember when I was working "on the tools" people used to make fun of it and call it a "tapper". It is now my BIG hammer when doing SAK mods. I also have 2oz, 1oz and even a 1/2oz jewelers hammer and that little thing does a perfectly adequate job on 58mm SAK pins.
The 2oz and 1oz were less than $18 incl postage off eBay for the pair.
Here are my hammers with a couple of items so you can gauge size.
Once you have your gear... practice, practice, practice. Get as long a length of 2.5mm brass rod as will fit in your drill chuck with no more than 5mm sticking out and peen a head on the end... then cut it off, file the end and peen another head on it... keep going until it is too short to hold in the chuck. A couple of lengths of brass is cheap compared to any SAK you may be serious about modding.
Once you get a feel for hitting things, go buy a few beater SAKs off eBay or somewhere and rip them apart and practice on them. I bought a lot of 40 "dealer's leftovers" for $50 and had no end of fun. I pulled them apart and sorted all the liners, blades and tools into "good" "okay" and "trash" piles. I practiced on the trash, then built up the okay and good knives, kept the best few for myself and sold the rest again on eBay. In the end, even not counting the ones I kept, I easily broke even so the Spartan, Climber and Camper that I kept were essentially free. as was my practice material. I even sold some of the trash knives for $5 each.
It will also give you practice at removing and refitting scales, drilling out pins without destroying bushings and many other skills that will benefit you when you start to sit down to mod knives that you really care about.
Have fun, be crazy, build up "silly" knives like the all openers "French Army knife"
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