Knives made from meteorites?

sambo. said:
for a mere $1,825, i highly, highly doubt they are made from genuine meteorite materials. or if they are, i doubt there's more than a gram or two of meteorite material in the knife.

when 30kg worth of meteorite landed near Winton in 2006 the landowner became a spectacularly wealthy individual (he's also a really nice guy, so please don't hate him for it).

it's possible that it's genuine, but i doubt it for that price and i rekon provenance of the materials would be very hard to prove.

for a solid meteorite iron knife, i'd be expecting a price tag of well over $10k.
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If memory serves me, there was a recent tv episode of an auction house selling a piece of meteor (picture a giant Hershey Kiss) that was verified to have fallen in then the Soviet Union in the late 1940's - I think it sold for $2000.
 
Confederate said:
Meteorites are made from iron, and they command big bucks because they've been wandering through space for thousands of years. But who would want a blade made from iron?
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Um. I would, and you would, and probably everyone on this forum would.

You do know that steel is mostly iron, right?
 
Boker had a damascus bladed knife which contained meteorite a number of years ago, not as stratospherically priced if memory serves.
 
I've had a meteorite-handled knife at the top of my want list for several years. I wouldn't want it in the blade, but it'd be way cool to have bolsters made from the stuff. Practical? Nope. Cool? Definitely!

It's the same idea with Mastadon, or Mammoth ivory. Not really a better quality material, but having a history that's not as mundane as the rest makes it premium.

Bragging rights, show-off-ability, snobbish appeal, it's all the same. But there are those who just like unique stuff for their own enjoyment.
 
Mmm. I've been wanting something in musk ox for the same reason.:D That stuff's even more expensive than ivory, though.:eek:
 
Yeah, but only a cretin would baton through a cinder block in the first place.
 
borrowed time said:
My Dark Ops Shadow Knife. It's black. I sleep with it, I shave with it, I spear squirrels on the run with it. It's black. It's helped me de-animate hostile threats in the war-torn streets of third-world hell-holes. And it's black. It has more teeth than all my redneck cousins. I can vicariously live the life of an indestructible warrior through it. It's black. It makes me feel better about my pathetic, mediocre life. It's impregnated with Depleted Uranium. It's made of metal from a meteor and was forged in an active volcano by an Icelandic Master Blade Smith. Oh, and it's really cool because it's black.
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That's the one that is quenched by thrusting it into the heaving bosom of a maiden fair, if I recall.
 
The iron in meteorites has been used to make metal tools for thousands of years. They used to be sought out, as best they could be, as a source of "pre-smelted" iron that could be smithed into useful shapes. I am not sure if they even knew that they were from space...they just knew they had something different on their hands. There is some "native" iron in volcanic regions but everywhere else it is hidden in ores. Even if you knew it was there, which they didn't for a long time, you had to be able to generate a lot of heat to get it out.

Fast forward to a less remote point in time. All across Arctic Canada, the Inuit (Esikimo) people had simple iron tools...always did...way before Columbus. Little points, little awls, tiny little blades, nothing very sophisticated but iron none the less. Nobody anywhere south ever did...until the Europeans brought it. It was a huge puzzle until they found the Cape York Meteorite in Greenland. This thing is huge...like half a million pounds or something crazy like that. Turns out, for thousands of years the Inuit had been bashing little bits off of this thing and cold hammering them into tools...thus their smallness...and trading them all across their trade routes which went around the ice...but not southward.

So meteorites have a long history relevant to knife making.
 
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If I remember correctly, Bill Moran forged a knife from a chunk of meteor.
 
The Sgian Dubh that fellow makes is absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn't want to use any of those, though.
 
Fantasy author Terry Pratchett had a sword made that contained bits of meteorite. His reasoning:

Pratchett... also said he had thrown in "several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not".
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That's as good a reason as any. :)


Also relevent to our interests:

Pratchett has stored the sword, which he completed last year, in a secret location, apparently concerned about the authorities taking an interest in it.

He said: "It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime."
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http://www.news.com.au/technology/t...-with-meteorites/story-e6frfro0-1225926584339
 
In ancient times meteorites were desired because it was easier to get iron from them than smelting it from ore. This is why there are legends in many cultures of weapons forged from iron from the heavens.

These days it's immaterial for anything other than the cool factor, which is still a legitimate reason. But most modern steels now far exceed the properties of these legendary weapons.
 
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