Actually,
I ran into a fascinating article when researching sharpening technique that blew my mind away. I'll see if I can't dig up where I got this, but I remember the general gist of it:
I was reading about sharpening steels, the type commonly found in chef's knife sets and still quite common, even in hand picked knife sets of professional chef's.
The bit that really caught my breath was about the origin of the sharpening steel in its modern incarnation. It seems that it was developed to help butchers in buisy, large shops keep the mild steel knives they were using sharp as the day progressed.
It seems there was a time when it was considered easier, more economical, etc. to keep a steel in the apron or on the bench, with which it wouldn't take long at all to re-sharpen a blade of mild steel, which is a good thing, because the blade would dull quite quickly.
However, well made knives were more expensive, were harder to sharpen, and would still get dull in the course of a day's work.
I'm not so sure if that's helpful. I'm not entirely sure it's true. However, it stuck in my mind as I read the article, and so there it is.
