history of whet stones?

[knzn]

I was wondering what the mountain men/fur trappers carried to sharpen their skinning knives with.

Maybe another way to ask this is does anyone know when in history you could go to the general store and by a flat whet stone?

Then there is the native americans. Obviously they couldn't run down to the local sporting goods store and buy a new spyderco 204. I know they used a rock, but what kind? Different rocks in different parts of the country I would suppose.

A time or two, I have tried to sharpen my knife with a rock I have found, but with poor results. Of course it was a half hearted effort at best, and my survival didn't depend on it!
thanks

 

[Roger Blake]

I am not that knowledgeble but since no one else answered I will take a shot but some of this is speculation.

The indians did not have steel. They used flint in their knives and arrowheads. That material can be cleaved or "flaked" (not sure of the correct term) to form a very sharp, hard but brittle edge. When dull they just flaked some more off thus getting a new sharp egde.

Amongst peoples that had iron and steel, natural stones must have been around at least as long as smelting iron and even bronze. Even clay predates this and this what your 204 is. Japanese used natural waterstones. I don't know when "india and "oil" stones were first made.

I would think in the days of the mountain men in this country the stone of choice at trading post / hardware store was Arkensaw hard and soft.

 

[Cougar Allen]

Sandstone is good. For finer stones it depends on what's available in your area....

I think it's been possible to buy a sharpening stone at a general store for a good many centuries, but even now people use rocks they pick up off the ground in some areas of the US where good stones are easy to find.

It's convenient to be able to buy a stone that's good and flat and have a choice of grits and good hard long-lasting and fast-cutting materials like diamond and silicon carbide, but we could get along all right without that. You can probably find a good selection of grits in your area and if not you could have traded for stones only found hundreds of miles away; things like that have been traded long distances for thousands of years. You can grind two stones together to get flat surfaces -- it'll take you a while, but the Indians didn't have television to keep them occupied (they had steel knives as soon as they could get them -- the Plains Indians traded for guns long before the white settlers got that far inland; for a long time the traders had no idea why the local Indians wanted large caliber short barrel smoothbores when it was obviously a bad choice of gun for the woodlands ... they didn't know those guns were getting traded to other tribes hundreds of miles away who were hunting buffalo with them ... I'm wandering way off topic here, aren't I ... time to make more coffee....)



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-Cougar Allen :{)
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This post is not merely the author's opinions; it is the trrrrrruth. This post is intended to cause dissension and unrest and upset people, and ultimately drive them mad. Please do not misinterpret my intentions in posting this.

 

[Jeff Clark]

This is a good question, but I don't have direct history. If you use edged tools a lot you soon decide you need an efficient sharpening tool. For thousands of years people have used edged tools for harvesting grain, cutting wood, butchering, hide preperation, cultivating, and as weapons. Pedal powered grinding wheels have been around for centuries--I've even used one. With all those tools around I'm sure people did not go out and scrounge a random flat rock when they needed a good edge.

I would think that a mountain man who skinned beaver for a living would have a good stone. I would expect a somewhat lighter stone than average. I would guess something about 5" long, 2" wide and 3/4" thick would have worked. For speed and utility I would expect the grit to be medium to coarse.

 

[TAutry]

I have no facts, just conjecture.

Since the "Mountain Men" were active fairly late into the iron age, it is likely that portable sharpening stones were very common. After all, the use of iron and steel to make knives and tools was a technology imported to this continent probably from Europe. Sharpening would have come with that technology.

The use of metal weapons has been documented to ancient Greece and beyond. The shaping of stones dates at least a far back as the pyramids in Egypt. The Roman Empire spanned Europe and the Middle East. It is likely that they were instrumental in spreading knowledge of many things including the forging and sharpening of blades.

The secrets of the development of the whetsone are like many of the things we today take for granted, lost in the fabric of history.

Thanks for letting me ramble!

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Travis Autry
My knives are just like rabbits---they keep multiplying!!

 

[Cougar Allen]

I vaguely recall reading of whetstones being found in archeological digs -- how far back I don't remember. They wouldn't rot away, though.... Whetstones were used before the discovery of metal, used to grind stone knives in the neolithic era ... I can't say whether any have been found in stone age sites or not....

Seems to me I remember seeing whetstones listed in castle inventories and records of royal expenditures from the middle ages, too.

-Cougar :{)