Grandfather's Knife Trick

J

jlwamp

Joined
Aug 8, 2016
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14
Hello, everyone this is my first post here, and I just wanted to get some knowledge and see if anyone has heard of or can make sense of this.

On my last visit with my grandfather we was talking about sharpening methods and his couple of stones, and my aunt complained about always having a hard time sharpening one of her knives in particular. My grandfather said a thing he remembers they used to do was take a knife like that and shove it in some bread that their mom or wife had just pulled out the oven and leave it in there til the bread had cooled down all the way.
WHAT??
He has a difficult time explaining himself fully nowadays, so I don't know if he meant it would then take a keener edge, or just be easier to sharpen to a keener edge, but regardless he demonstrated on the knife and my aunt said it improved.

Does this make any metallurgical sense to anyone?
 
i guess if the bread is near 400 degrees, it may temper the hardness back ? personally, i temper mine in lasagna. (just kidding)
 
Super aggressive yeast?
I dunno, but if somebody shoved a knife in something I just cooked, then walked away, I would agree to whatever they asked when they returned. "Sharper now?" "Sure"
 
I'm glad it sounds strange to yal as well.
From what I gathered it was just something him and his pals/mining buddies did. Where they heard it from I have no clue
 
woodster said:
i guess if the bread is near 400 degrees, it may temper the hardness back ? personally, i temper mine in lasagna. (just kidding)
Click to expand...

yeah maybe the idea is to do it a few times until it tempers back slightly to make it a little quicker/easier to sharpen?
i mean I cant just throw a completed knife into the oven, so maybe it was just a convenient way to try and temper the blade a little
 
There is a maker who sticks his blades in dry ice before sharpening... claims it increases the sharpness pretty substantially. Whether it does or not, I don't know, but I'm skeptical.

Speaking of old "wives tails", this kind of reminds me of a story I heard from an older friend of mine: When he was a kid, he was in his neighbor's shop when a honey bee flew in and landed on the bench. The neighbor (then an old timer himself), cupped his hand over the honey bee and took it out side to let it go. Needless to say, my friend was absolutely astonished that the bee hadn't stung him. The neighbor proceeded to tell him the secret: If you clench your left hand into a fist as hard as you can, and hold it, you can simultaneously hold a bee in your right hand without fear of getting stung.

So my friend swears to me that he when and found a bee, clenched one hand and grabbed it with the other, and what to you know, it worked! Now, the neighbor, who was monitoring this tells my friend to loosen the grip in his other hand, he did so, and the bee immediately stung him.

Now... I'll try the knife in the bread trick; who wants to try the bee in the hand trick for me? :D
 
The "tempering knife in bread" wive's tale is a very widespread one where I'm from (Central Appalachia), there have been several times that someone's looked at me like I've got three heads when they understand that there is no cornbread involved in my tempering process. If there is any truth to it, maybe the bread was supposed to keep temperatures from swinging wildly, much like tempering in heated oils?

Jlwamp, since you've heard this as well, are you from the same region?
 
It is a version of the potato temper, where you plunge the blade in a big potato and put the potato on the coals of the fire. When the potato was done baking, the knife was tempered.In the loaf temper, the idea is that the bread came out of the oven hot, so the blade was being tempered in the hot bread. I also have heard of baking the blade in the oven for a while sitting in the middle of a pan of corn meal. I assume that was to assure the blade was evenly heated during temper.

In the past, tempering was done for a very short time. Hardening was also much less controlled. The blade was warmed up by some heat source and the "temper colors" were watched as they ran down the blade or tool. When the right color reached the edge, the tool was immediately cooled in water. Often the whole process took less than 60 seconds. Sometimes it was repeated a few times, but most often it was done this one quick time and the blade was done. If it was still too hard in places, those spots were hard to sharpen. A trick like sticking it in hot bread for half an hour, or baking in a potato would somewhat soften the hard spots a bit and give a more evenly tempered blade.
 
Not the same but I was in Austria recently. The old timers there in the mountains are positive that most of one's heat is lost from an uncovered head. Of course if this were true I could go camping in winter with no pants on but with a hat on and would be fine...or at least temperature wise. When I showed these guys several studies debunking this wives tail, they just could not believe it.


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I have heard of the cornbread method. Mix up a pan of cornbread In cast iron skillet and lay the blade in it. Cook away.

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Don't have any favorite inmates, I have over the last 27 years helped a large quantity, to become inmates.

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