Copper in Cutlery

It's interesting i never see people worrying about the chromium in stainless knives or cookware. The form in stainless isn't a problem, but the hexavalent form is pretty bad for you
Given i only like working with carbon steel maybe i should start some rumors :P
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
This topic pops up every so often. It is usually someone saying galvanized metal will kill you or spalted wood is deadly.

Just because something is biologically toxic does not mean it is unsafe to handle or use. Toxic does not necessarily mean poisonous or deadly.
The USA alone has minted five hundred of billion copper coins in the and the population is doing fine. As noted, copper pipes are considered the best type, etc.
Copper toxicity is from long exposure to food and water contamination, or long exposure to breathing the dust in mining and manufacturing. The normal symptoms are similar to metal fume fever.
The human liver filters out copper. IIRC, peeing green is a sign of high copper exposure. People with high concentrations of copper show signs of liver disease and jaundice. There are some genetic diseases where the liver can't process copper well and the people are more sensitive to copper, but those are rare.

On the other hand, the tin-foil hat folks may have something:
Copper swords and knives have proven to be unsafe. it seems several million people have died from them. And the copper jacket on a bullet - WOW, those things can really be fatal!
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Hahaha, sarcasm is my first language, so I'm really feeling those last comments.

Your points are very valid, even without solid numbers, the logic definitely steers down the path of copper being safe for cutlery. Thanks for your reply!
 
Horsewright said:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. 5/6 years ago or so copper bolsters were all the rage on kitchen knives. There'd been a study done that had found copper to be naturally antibacterial or some such. A Doc friend asked me to use it on some kitchen knives for his wife and so I momentarily jumped on the copper bolster bandwagon. Didn't stay there long as I didn't like working it. It gets HOT real fast and was grippy on the belts. So I made a few knives with copper bolsters and that was the end of that. Seems like that all the rage has like so many, has passed:

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I will still use copper Loveless bolts on occasion and the mosaic pins that I use most of the time have copper in em. Ain't kilt no one yet. Funny story:

Some years back it was pretty common in the cowboy world to wear a copper bracelet. Thought was, that it helped with the aches and pains that come with such a lifestyle. I had an older buddy who started riding and cowboying a lil late in life (early 70s). He'd led a pretty active life already and his bod was on the pretty used up side. Pro race car driver, played a lil semi pro football (never went to the NFL was too little), skied like a demon, MP during the Korean War in Japan, logger and the list of bumps and bruises went on. Hawkeye, as everybody called him was exposed to these copper bracelets and became a huge believer. He said he used to start every morning with a handful of Tylenol just to get going. Once he started with the copper bracelet he quit the Tylenol as he didn't need it anymore.

So one time, Hawkeye, John, (Hawkeye's son in law) and myself, we was at a horse deal somewhere and we were wandering around some of the booths of vendors there. We stopped at a booth that was selling lots of different copper bracelets. Cowboys tended to wear their bracelets mainly on the left arm, that way it was out of the way when dallying (wrapping the rope around the horn to act as a clutch/brake to whatever you have roped). The gal that was running the booth could best be described as New Age ish and I'm sure there was incense burning somewhere. Anyhoo we're looking at the bracelets and she leans over the counter and says: "you guys are wearing your bracelets on the wrong arm!" "Whadya mean?" comes the cowboy reply. She lifts both ams towards the heavens, looks up and with 3 or 4 bracelets on her right arm she says: "You have to have them on your receiving arm!" And literally went "Ahhhhhhhhhhh..." Didn't take us long to find us in another booth.
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That's the one reason I don't like using it, its very grippy and gummy when hand sanding.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
True.

Another fact only the New-Age kids know is that tin foil hats only work if there is 2% copper in the foil alloy. This disrupts the EMC waves (Extraterrestrial Mind Control).
To get the required electrical properties, you have to alloy your own billets from 98% Sn and 2% Cu, then hand hammer out the foil with a copper maul on a tin anvil (or is it the other way around??).
To prevent the masses from blocking their EMC rays with foil hats, the Star Chamber controls the world copper market and only allows 0.2% copper in tin foil. After they landed in Roswell in 1910 PCE (Pre Crash Era) they took over the world's tin supplies and substituted aluminum in tin foil. Tin is the most valuable element in the universe and earth is its major source. Tin atoms are beamed to a galaxy named Far-Far-Away from a transmitter in Arizona disguised as an ancient meteor crater. Ever wonder why only NAA astronauts are the only people allowed in the bottom of the crater and they have to wear space suits? (look it up if you don't believe me)
A rogue alien life form tried to warn us on our early B&W TV sets. He told us that tin foil hats would protect us. But he was stopped by The Chamber. They turned his image into silly plush toys, and no one listened to him seriously. Sadly, Gordon Shumway passed away from unspecified causes. Most free-thinkers believe he was poisoned with copper, which is deadly toxic on Melmac. His body disappeared and is reportedly kept somewhere in the Nevada desert.
The Chamber immediately reduced the copper in aluminum foil by a factor of 10.
If you doubt my information, I will point out that AJ Reynolds spelled backwards is SDLONYER JA. If ever there was proof of an alien name, it is that!
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😂😂
 
Alex Topfer said:
It's interesting i never see people worrying about the chromium in stainless knives or cookware. The form in stainless isn't a problem, but the hexavalent form is pretty bad for you
Given i only like working with carbon steel maybe i should start some rumors :p
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😂 I'm beginning to think this knife maker maybe just doesn't like copper, and his ego demands that people like only what he likes, so he's berating any knife makers using copper in their blades.
 
Alex Topfer said:
It's interesting i never see people worrying about the chromium in stainless knives or cookware. The form in stainless isn't a problem, but the hexavalent form is pretty bad for you
Given i only like working with carbon steel maybe i should start some rumors :p
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Back in the late 1960's I worked as a research chemist for VA Chemicals. The owner of the company had many other businesses. One was a chrome plating plant in NY. The discharge water from the plating process has a good amount of chromium in it, but there were no regulations controlling it. He tasked me and my lab partner with coming up with a way to remove virtually all the chromium from the discharge water at these type plants. He wanted the water pure to 100 µg/L. It took a while, but we came up with a process.
He patented the process, installed it in his plants ... and waited. He knew that the regulations were coming soon and was ready for them. The others in the industry were not. When the government placed the regulations in 1974, he was waiting with a patent to clean it effectively. I heard he made a lot of money licensing out his patent.
 
I have a sincere question for those of you with copper in a kitchen knife: were you to cut a slice of apple, are you able to taste the metal on the apple?
I ask for the simple reason that if I cut an apple with an O-1 blade, I can taste metal. Even a plain carbon blade I can taste on some foods. I don't taste it with a stainless blade. That said, I cook my Mrs Grass in glass because I can taste the metal if we use our 50 year old Revereware SS.
I don't know if it's my particular taster or if it's one of those things like smokers being able to detect much tinier concentrations of cyanide than non-smokers. It might also have something to do with 30 years of lab-chemical exposure, too, or maybe something to do with the twenty friggin medications.
Just curious, and it came to mind today. Thanks for any responses.
 
Hi Mike,

I can taste carbon steels also, I think its always been the way.
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of Sheffield made fruit knives knocking about over here, they are all made of silver for that very reason. Of course these are very old. Before the advent of stainless steel.
 
I have heard of others saying they can taste metallic flavours from carbon steel. It's never bothered me personally, but there is a lot of variation in sensory perception between people
As Navman said it's just iron. You'll have to eat a lot of 1095 to have a problem :P
 
Alex Topfer said:
I have heard of others saying they can taste metallic flavours from carbon steel. It's never bothered me personally, but there is a lot of variation in sensory perception between people
As Navman said it's just iron. You'll have to eat a lot of 1095 to have a problem :p
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It's more the off-putting metallic taste than anything else. (My employment and play history has provided more chemical contamination than any kitchen knife ever could. I don't much worry about it at this point. Too late.)

In this case, though, it would be like sucking on an American penny whilst chewing apple. Sorta gack... :)

Not a biggie, the thread just triggered a thought re: copper and taste, so I thought I'd ask. As you point out, we all have our own individual taste perception spectrum. Covid trashed both my wife's and my taste to some extent. We speak frequently about the differences in our taste perceptions then vs now.
 
You have to be well past 60 to remember this:
Mr. French was preparing the salad and was carefully tearing the lettuce leaf by leaf. Buffy asked why he did that, and he replied, "The knife would ruin the flavor of the lettuce." Buffy looked in the metal bowl and asked, "Why doesn't the bowl ruin the flavor?" Mr. French shooed her out of the kitchen, and as he went back to work, he picked up the bowl and looked in it puzzled, saying quietly "Hmmm, why doesn't the bowl ruin the flavor?"

When we taste iron on or in food we wrinkle our face (it is an evolutionary reflex) ... it has to do with evolution. Certain things are bad for you. Meat from dead things can be poisonous. Thus, we have evolved a great disgust for the scent of death and rotting meat. Many things we eat are far more odorous than carrion, but evolution has taught us that they are not dangerous to eat.

Iron is highly concentrated in water that collects in pools on iron rich ground or runoff from iron ore outcroppings. While we need iron to live, excess iron causes stomach cramps, nausea/vomiting, and severe constipation. In young children, it can be fatal. Evolution has taught us the taste of the iron ion and thus we don't like things that have the taste. We will drink cloudy of dirty water but are repulsed at rusty looking water. Nature taught this to us a million years before anyone knew what iron was.

There are many other ions and smells we have a great sensitivity to for evolutionary reasons.
On the other hand, some of these odors have lost their effect on us. The pheromones of women do not arouse men like they did 500,000 years ago. Over the last 100,000 years women developed other ways to attract males ... hair, makeup, clothing (or lack of it). Slowly, sex became both recreational as well as reproductive in humans, and the need to attract men by scent was unnecessary. Males discovered that protection, food, shelter, pretty rocks, shells, etc., were things that made females receptive to non-reproductive sex. This was evolution, not prostitution. It was all about survival. Eventually, male humans stopped being able to detect a female in estrus. Male pheromones still arouse women to some extent. The smell of a man hard at work is attractive to most women. The smell of a nervous man is unpleasant.
Estrus is a cool word. In English, and modern use, it means "to be in heat", referring to when a female animal is receptive to mating. It means "frenzy" in Latin ... literally "to drive males wild and into a frenzy". It means "gadfly" in Greek ... meaning "to drive crazy by the bites of gadflies". (running and jumping about flapping your arms). You can see the connection.
 
lol … in northern minnesota, called the “iron range” for a reason, it is very, very difficult to find water that does not have significant dissolved iron … it’s in the lakes, the streams, and most of the well water (all of the streams/rivers flowing into the north shore of Lake Superior literally run brown with the stuff) … yet people all over that area drink the stuff…

Back to tastes … my wife will clearly identify when I have cut an onion using a carbon steel knife, so I have to change out knives there (I’ve been seriously thinking of sourcing a new SS nakiri for that very reason…
 
That is normal range iron content. High content can cause problems. The EPA limit is .3mg/L A lot of places exceed that. However, this is not even close to the 10mg/L that can be found in some high-iron water sources.

Most folks in the high iron content areas have water softeners (or their city water supply does it for them). This removes most of the excess iron.
 
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