DougieB

Hi All, So yesterday, I set up my little movie set and made a movie of me rubbing a kitchen knife against a hot rolled flat bar. It turned out to be a comedy! The camera got tired of waiting for me and shut off after about 10 min. Oh well, as you guys have given me some great ideas including self sharpening shears and working with the specialized anvils and such, I am confident I am going to come up with a suitable demonstration. The flat bar does not conform at all to the edge of the blade like a strop, and it really limits the contact area. The blade I tried was only a little worse than one that could be brought back sharp with a butcher steel. But after about 20 minutes - I could see no effect to the edge. Towards the end of the 20 min I was starting to see if running down the edges of the flat bar would get me anywhere. I did see a slight bit of wear to the flat bar. Maybe I need more patience and a jig to hold the perfect angle so I am only working the very edge. My normal strop is a continuous belt and it would have done that edge in 20 seconds.

Hi Thomas, I would be interested in some real wrought iron and I can file it. December would be fine too as I still haven't figured how to work the pieces against each other. I'm in Calgary, AB, Canada.

Thanks Golden_eagle, The strop idea will work fine. I want to make a little youtube vid to prove it to a brother. I was trying to think of a way I could come up with two pieces of iron for an experiment, but if I can sharpen a kitchen knife on a piece of mild steel it will be evidence enough. If anyone does have any historical knowledge though on iron sharpening iron, I'd love to hear. Thanks bigjohn and Bob too, I know this is as much theological as metalurgical, I figured this may be a good place for ideas.

Hi Golden_eagle, That makes sense. What kind of experiment could I set up to prove that? I have been thinking about mounting a 5 lb weight on my wood lathe and turning it at low speed.

Hi Rich, Thank you. I am hoping to stay away from carbon steel in favour of sticking to people living in the early iron age where tools would be crude. (I think) I am assuming that the initial edge would somehow be pounded out on an anvil, then possibly stoned, but then would somehow running iron over iron possibly improve the edge? Like you say it is all about angles. The quote is from proverbs, As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. I think it is easy to show that one man sharpens another, I would like to know how they arrived at the first part. If there may be some iron age historians out there?

Hi there, I was trying to find someone who could help me verify if the above statement is true. And if it is true, how would someone go about proving it. It was originally written over 2500 years ago, and I wonder if anyone knows metalworking history on how iron would have been used to sharpen iron. I do quite a bit of knife sharpening - but I don't own any iron age implements. Thanks, Doug