I recently acquired an old Saami knife that someone had been sharpening on a bench grinder. This knife is old, guessing late 1800s. Beautiful scrimshaw antler sheath, old blood stains on the bone handle, primitive forge work, real character.
I discovered it had a laminated blade so I started in on restoring the edge to the traditional flat scandi grind on my oil stones. I didn’t want to smear the layer definition so I opted for using my modified norton trihone. No way of knowing what the steel is, but it is harder than anything I have put on my stones before, including so called supersteels. It is harder than Chinese arithmetic. I actually had to use my diamond flattening plate for the roughest work
In the hours I worked on my coarse crystolon, I started to actually develop a slurry. Never seen that before. I worked the slurry as it seemed effective and forgiving for initial stages but when I moved to a finer crystolon, I found I had a slight convex to the grind. Went back and flattened the coarse stone and kept it clean. I checked the apex with a pocket microscope and found smeared scratches on the outside layer and a granular surface on the inner core. Great big crystals in a finer crystal matrix. Looks like raw austenite/martensite with no tempering. Maybe quenched in ice? Looked like the coarse stone tore out some of those “carbides”. I became worried that it might not get sharp. I progressed through the India stone and down to my black Arkansas (yes I use oil on black Arkansas)
Re-check with the microscope showed that the black ark had polished the crystals and left them in place. The black ark also brought out the lamination layers on the bevel. The soft outer layer became much darker than the polished hard layer. The edge passed the freestanding cigarette paper chop. Maybe 6 hours on the stones over 3 days. This is my current favorite knife.
Has anyone seen such hard steel on an old knife? I expect the edge to be brittle...but it has taken an edge equal to my best.
Cutler
I discovered it had a laminated blade so I started in on restoring the edge to the traditional flat scandi grind on my oil stones. I didn’t want to smear the layer definition so I opted for using my modified norton trihone. No way of knowing what the steel is, but it is harder than anything I have put on my stones before, including so called supersteels. It is harder than Chinese arithmetic. I actually had to use my diamond flattening plate for the roughest work
In the hours I worked on my coarse crystolon, I started to actually develop a slurry. Never seen that before. I worked the slurry as it seemed effective and forgiving for initial stages but when I moved to a finer crystolon, I found I had a slight convex to the grind. Went back and flattened the coarse stone and kept it clean. I checked the apex with a pocket microscope and found smeared scratches on the outside layer and a granular surface on the inner core. Great big crystals in a finer crystal matrix. Looks like raw austenite/martensite with no tempering. Maybe quenched in ice? Looked like the coarse stone tore out some of those “carbides”. I became worried that it might not get sharp. I progressed through the India stone and down to my black Arkansas (yes I use oil on black Arkansas)
Re-check with the microscope showed that the black ark had polished the crystals and left them in place. The black ark also brought out the lamination layers on the bevel. The soft outer layer became much darker than the polished hard layer. The edge passed the freestanding cigarette paper chop. Maybe 6 hours on the stones over 3 days. This is my current favorite knife.
Has anyone seen such hard steel on an old knife? I expect the edge to be brittle...but it has taken an edge equal to my best.
Cutler
