Another sharpening thread, but with a twist...

[Eric The Viking]

I was digging out an English Heritage guidebook for an acquaintance this morning (about Stokesay), and skimming through it over breakfast.

How were tools sharpened in C11 and C12? I mean quite a bit earlier than Moxon (does he talk about sharpening?).

The Romans had ready access to a range of stones, right down to Carrara marble, which would give a fine edge. I know about millstones and rotating grindstones, etc. but they would inevitably leave a coarse result. Even the Normans' contemporaries across the planet were producing incredible steels, but we apparently weren't. Notwithstanding, did any of the Oriental techniques, such as waterstones, arrive here?

I strikes me that, just as the limitations of bronze must have determined a woodworker's capabilities in the Bronze Age, the ability to get a really keen edge on iron/steel* would have constrained the Normans and later? Stokesay's big hall dates from the Plantagenet period although some of the place is earlier.

I know, "He's got an adze: he's a roofer!" and "He's got a froe, he's a furniture maker!" persists to this day, but even so, many things not Froe-ish do need to be sharp (and a sharp adze woudn't be a bad idea either). So what were they sharpened with, and how?

E.

*I'm guessing 'steel-by-accident': not designed metallurgy exactly, but probably techniques from smithing would lead to steels of some sort being created.

 

[Vann]

I believe they've just unearthed an 11th century diamond plate in Sussex - the Piltdown Plate...

I'll get me coat :mrgreen:

Cheers, Vann.

 

[AndyT]

The idea of rubbing metal on a bit of hard stone is quite an old one!

I just happen to be reading a little book on Egyptian Woodworking at the moment, by Geoffrey Killen, who writes:

"Egyptian carpenters, like their modern counterparts, used a hone to sharpen the cutting edge of their tools. It was made from slate and usually had a hole bored at one end which allowed it to be hung on a peg somewhere in the workshop. The centre of the stone would become dished by the repeated honing action. Many marks can be seen along such hones while a few run across them, these marks being made by the carpenter when, after sharpening the blade, he turned it over on to its flat side to wipe away the burr. To assist in the honing of the blades a small amount of oil was applied to the surface of the stone."

A quick search of the British Museum collection throws up lots of examples. These are a few:

Egyptian, 26th Dynasty

Viking, 9-10th century, found in Norway

Bronze age, found near Salisbury

Celtic, 6-7th century, found near Llandudno

This link should take you to a search of English whetstones in the BM collection, so you can see that examples have been found from the Bronze Age, Roman times and later in the middle ages:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx?place=42362&object=19450

 

[JimB]

It's not as if they didn't know what sharp really was. Knapped flint takes a lot of beating even now. Start off with millstone grit, hone on some welsh slate and strop on a serf - eat out your hearts scary sharps. :wink:

 

[iNewbie]

I know Sweeney Todd used the Scary Sharp method.

 

[AndyT]

I rather like this whetstone from the Sutton Hoo hoard

- presumably used to sharpen swords?

The four-faceted, swelling shape is similar to the strickle, which used to be used to sharpen scythes while out in the fields.

They were made of wood, dipped in grease and sand. This one does look a bit smarter, especially when seen with the full rig!

 

[Jacob]

30,000 years to the earliest polished stone tools. The Japanese claim to be first here but I guess rubbing a tool (stone or metal) on a bit of stone would have been discovered all over the place. It's a wonder that chimps don't do it - they do a tiny bit of tool selection apparently - looking for the right twig to extract termites with etc.

Presumably our earliest technology and the start of our world domination - making our own claws and teeth even better than a sabre tooth tiger's.

 

[AndyT]

I just thought I'd take the opportunity to be the first to point out that all these old stones are nice and curvy, not flat.

However did they manage? :-"

 

[Jacob]

I just thought I'd take the opportunity to be the first to point out that all these old stones are nice and curvy, not flat.

However did they manage? :-"

It took 30000 years to develop the MkII Veritas jig, when sharpening really began!

 

[MIGNAL]

No so. It was 30,000 years to develop the MK I and 30,002 years to develop the MK II.
That's quite remarkable progress on behalf of Veritas.

 

[rxh]

I just happen to be reading a little book on Egyptian Woodworking at the moment, by Geoffrey Killen, who writes:

Andy, is there any info. on Egyptian planes in your book?

 

[AndyT]

I just happen to be reading a little book on Egyptian Woodworking at the moment, by Geoffrey Killen, who writes:

Andy, is there any info. on Egyptian planes in your book?

Sadly, no.

As far as I know, the earliest surviving planes are Roman, from the Vesuvius eruption.
The question of the origin of the plane was one that the late Bill Goodman (author of the original BPM) put a lot of thought and research into. There's an interesting essay by him published in TATHS Journal No 9.
Summarising rather brutally, although the Greeks had a word ("rhykane") which has been translated as "plane" it only occurs a few times, and translators, faced with a rare word, often have to guess at something that makes sense in the context. So possibly, "adze" or "scraper" would be a more accurate translation. There are no surviving Greek planes or pictures of planes, but that does not prove that they did not exist.

In the same essay, he notes that the German tool historian Greber describes Egyptian coffins from Abusir in Egypt, saying that one of the coffins was found to contain wood shavings, and had construction methods that needed planes to make grooves and rebates, so there must have been planes in the second half of the fourth century BC.

 

[rxh]

Thanks Andy,
I was rather hoping that a plane had been found with the goods in a pyramid.

Oh well, there won't be a "King Tut" repro. plane project then

 

[Eric The Viking]

... This one does look a bit smarter, especially when seen with the full rig!

Hmm. It's barely safe enough for sharpening really. And, I have to ask, is the back of the tunic fluorescent?

It doesn't look like there's a lot of hearing protection either...

E.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

In his history of the development of machine tools 'Tools for the Job', LTC Rolt writes that the Glastonbury Celts [probably among others] used a simple pole lathe to mount stones for turning into bracelets, and it would quickly have become apparent that the principle could be applied to the sharpening of iron, and later steel, edge tools and weapons [though whether it did or not is not proven, as I understand it]. The first known representation of a grinding wheel occurs in the Utrecht Psalter of AD850, but the device would almost certainly have been in use many years before that.

The Utrecht Psalter illustration (more a small cartoon) shows a vertical wheel of about four feet diameter mounted on a horizontal spindle, with a hand crank at one end. One operator cranks the handle whilst the grinder sits astride a board pivotted behind him, with the workpiece at the tip end of the board. He could thus bring his body-weight to bear on the job, whilst controlling it with his arms and leg movements. The same basic method was still in use until the second half of the 20th century in Britain, albeit with the wheel power driven.

So - any consideration of C11 and C12 sharpening would have to take account of the existence of grinding wheels, though how commonly-used they were at that time I have no idea.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

In the same essay, he notes that the German tool historian Greber describes Egyptian coffins from Abusir in Egypt, saying that one of the coffins was found to contain wood shavings, and had construction methods that needed planes to make grooves and rebates, so there must have been planes in the second half of the fourth century BC.

There's almost certainly an untranslated hieroglyph in the same Pyramid that says, "In the coffin we placed shavings but half a thou thick, being the work of much plane sole flattening and irons of the finest steel, sharpened with the best stones known to the Pharohs"

 

[Jacob]

Howard Carter, on opening the tomb:
"Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful sharpening things, with brass knobs on.”

 

[bridger]

Mirthmaking aside, a look at some of the preroman plane designs would be most interesting.

 

[AndyT]

Excuse me reviving a rather old thread, but I thought it would be a good place to link to a blog post at Lost Art Press. It's by their researcher Suzanne Ellison. It's a survey of pictures of ancient sharpening stones. She's found some of the examples we did but also plenty more - she's very good at this sort of research.

https://blog.lostartpress.com/2019/01/1 ... profanity/

I especially liked these stones on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Too big and heavy to move, they remain as a public sharpening facility:

There's also a bit more evidence from Roman times suggesting that perfect flatness hasn't always been a priority!

 

[D_W]

To the earlier question of asian stones making it to the western market, I'm not aware of it occurring in any volume prior to razor distributors doing it in the early 1900s or late 1800s (once in a while, you can find a vintage stone that's large for a razor stone with the words "A-HONE" on it. Those are generally japanese stones).

Unless something is really hard, japanese stones would've provided no advantage over more common local stones in the US and Europe (the difference between them and most sedimentary stones being that they typically have 15-20% aluminum oxide particles in them from settled volcanic ash).

The good stones wouldn't have even been available to the public in japan a couple of hundred years ago.