Sacrilege or Sense?

[MikeG.]

I reckon that any sharpening thread from now on should be biscuited.........

 

[Tasky]

it's Morris, so was his father for that matter.

I believe we have the same dealer...

hob nobs are for amateurs, any decent biscuit advocate knows they are only eaten till you get the hang of it, then you move away from them to the more professional biscuits.

I disagree - It's purely a matter of taste... and any half-serious professional would be using Ouma rusks for dunking, anyway. REAL professionals bake their own... or at least get their grandmother's to do it!

 

[Sam_Jack]

Here I sit – dumfounded. To take a perfectly solid, educated discussion of the contents of the biscuit tin and turn it into a twice baked advertorial for inferior products, simply amazes me. Where are the moderators when you need ‘em? Eh, where? There is only one of a possible two candidates for an acceptable biscuit break; the peerless Tim- Tam or, the dog’s favourite, the Shortbread (aka the Scots Finger).

Personally, I have found it almost impossible to get an accurate angle on any cutting edge, without the divine inspiration a mug of Yorkshire tea and two Tim-Tam biscuits; no matter what angle I strive for. It is my firm belief that the only suitable stropping medium is the residual melted chocolate liberally applied to a strop made of the wrapper.

I learned at the age of about seven, to sharpen router blades, spoke shave blades, plane blades and chisels; in the traditional manner. Even managed the odd saw or two as well. Taught by a kindly Grand-Papa; a man of patience, wit and an endless provider of Shortcake biscuits and tea. He even taught me to roll his smokes. Nah, I was simply curious about the ‘design’ factors used to make 25 the production model. I wonder did the engineers actually measure a hundred men’s blades and find that the ‘average’ cutting edge was the 25; or, did the craftsmen of the day say no, make ‘em at 25, we can then adjust them to suit. As Jacob says, 30 is 1/3 of a right angle and easier to gauge; which makes perfectly good sense to me... Not that it matters; and, it is definitely time for beer; ‘Smoko’ is long past.

 

[novocaine]

it's Morris, so was his father for that matter.

I believe we have the same dealer...

hob nobs are for amateurs, any decent biscuit advocate knows they are only eaten till you get the hang of it, then you move away from them to the more professional biscuits.

I disagree - It's purely a matter of taste... and any half-serious professional would be using Ouma rusks for dunking, anyway. REAL professionals bake their own... or at least get their grandmother's to do it!

Typical, we are having a discussion on biscuits and you have to go and derail it in attempt to push your own agenda, this isn't a thread about baking, if you want to talk about baking then start a new thread.

Rusks are for juveniles, I won't have them in my shop, if a new apprentice turns up with rusks he's quickly dispatched to the local purveyors of baked items to learn the ways of the masters.

as to shortbread, I think that is a local thing for folks north of the border, I can't disagree that they have their place, but they aren't the be all and end all and any further south than Cardiff they simply aren't suitable nor do they travel well enough to be of use by the time you reach the south (also known as Birmingham).

*I think the grind was based on plane blades from Stanley and the like and became the norm across the board (because they didn't have to rejig to grind something else).


* if that doesn't start a flame war I'm amazed.

 

[MikeG.]

.......Rusks are for juveniles.........

You've not been to South Africa, evidently.

 

[Jacob]

as to shortbread, I think that is a local thing for folks north of the border, I can't disagree that they have their place, but they aren't the be all and end all and any further south than Cardiff they simply aren't suitable nor do they travel well enough to be of use by the time you reach the south (also known as Birmingham).

It's been advancing southwards for many years, probably a result of climate change.
More alarmingly - I recently bought a scotch pie in Macclesfield. I've never seen one, let alone bought one, south of the border before. This could be a wake up call?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

It's been advancing southwards for many years

That's what happens with ageing. It's a b****r, isn't it.

I recently bought a scotch pie in Macclesfield. I've never seen one, let alone bought one, south of the border before. This could be a wake up call?

We need tighter controls on immigrant pies !

 

[nabs]

more nonsense than normal on this thread, although I do agree with the bit about Yorkshire Tea.

No matter your stance on Brexit I hope we can all at least take some consolation from the fact the tea growers on the banks of the River Don will at long last be protected from the meddling of the unelected EU bureaucrats.

 

[Tasky]

Typical, we are having a discussion on biscuits and you have to go and derail it in attempt to push your own agenda,

My agenda and how I choose to identify is none of your business. I am a free, free-thinking individual with every legal right to identify and express myself however I feel.

this isn't a thread about baking, if you want to talk about baking then start a new thread.

What for? All the cool bakers are already in this on, evidently. It even smells like warm bread!!

Rusks are for juveniles

Ah-hahahahahahah..... Oh, indeed, I shall make an amusing plaything of you!!!
Do not make the utterly amateur, and usually once-in-a-lifetime, mistake of assuming Ouma rusks are the same thing as Farley's rusks... The latter you feed to your newborn. The former you generally have to cut on the bandsaw!!!
Proper rusks are designed to be dunked.... because, just like 18th Century ship's biscuits, they simply cannot be bitten into by any human, unless they eat concrete for a living!
Proper rusks are purely for professionals only. Word is the goverment was going to require a purchase licence for any non-Saffer looking to buy them, but Tesco had started stocking them.

as to shortbread, I think that is a local thing for folks north of the border, I can't disagree that they have their place

Most countries have some weird alcoholic concoction which is so foul it makes you ill, and teh sole purpose is bringing it back from holiday to inflict on your mates (such as Unicum from Hungary, which tastes like that earwax-flavour stuff to stop kids biting their nails). The sole reason these drinks exist is to make money off tourists. none of the locals drink it.
Scotland kinda screwed up making a nasty alcoholic beverage, as whisky seems rather popular - Even I have one I like.
So, to combat this, they came up with shortbread!!

You've not been to South Africa, evidently.

^ See that?
He didn't even need it explaining. He already knew - That is a REAL man!!!

 

[MikeG.]

.........

You've not been to South Africa, evidently.

^ See that?
He didn't even need it explaining. He already knew - That is a REAL man!!!

So real I've eaten Ouma* rusks raw. Un-dunked.











Just the once, mind you. I'm not a slow learner.



* Other brands are available. No-one eats them, but they're available. Ouma means grandmother in Afrikaans, as I'm sure you all wanted to know.

 

[Bm101]

Normally I'd avoid joining or encouraging a derailed thread like this or perhaps the Infamous Tailors Strike of Saville Row of 1.25pm 07/08/82 that ended in agreement at 1.26pm when it was unilaterally agreed that Charlie did actually take two sugars in his tea and not one and a half. Tailoring resumed that afternoon with no bloodletting thank God but his train home was a little late that day when a rear wheel popped off the racks in a coincidental turn of events. Thankfully everyone was fine.
I only join this discussion with a heavy heart because as always when the eternal 'biscuit' argument rears it's head historical ignorance of the origins of the word raise their head.
While the amateurs endlessly bicker and argue about the relevance ofBrand Choice us older and wiser heads nod sagely and stand clear of confrontation. We do this because as experts we understand the true conflict is not inter brand but of older origin.
In the past we had less illusions about entomological geneological disputes.

We only ate Scuits.

The brand was unimportant. In those days there was no mass manufacturing so all scuits were home baked of course.
If you offered someone a scuit you'd ask them!
Wanna Scuit?
No I'm fine! OR God Yeh I'l love a Scuit! Is the kettle on?!
The whole term Biscuit technically means two scuits.
Ergo: 'Would you like a scuit?'
If it's ok I'll have biscuits. I'm am rather peckish actually! Thanks.
What you don't hear much anymore is when you hear really hungry people asking for triscuits.

Three scuits is just taking the jolly selfish. Let's face it.
Some people.
These days I'll occasionally hear uncouth people ask for a pack of biscuits at the local shoppery! Gosh! A pack! Imagine!
It always brings a chuckle and a grin to my face.
If only they knew!

 

[novocaine]

Ok i surrender. Top thread of the year.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I though bi-scuits were scuits with twice as many nookie options.

Real men drink Yorkshire Gold. Even in Cheshire. But don't tell everyone, especially the Lancastrians.

 

[novocaine]

Zero arguments there CC.
But im from the correct side of those hills.

 

[Rorschach]

I am confused, should I be sharpening my chisels using digestives or hobnobs? What do I use for stropping, rich tea? Are custard creams used as stropping paste? Where do jaffa cakes fit in or are they just for cabinet makers tools?

 

[MikeG.]

......... Where do jaffa cakes fit in.....?

They don't. They're cakes. They're exempt.

 

[sunnybob]

I am the official repository for all confiscated jaffa cakes marauding as biscuits
(2 pints of lager and a packet of crisps PLEASE),
whether they are sharpened or stirred.

Chisels and plane blades, not so much, unless packed amongst loose bourbon biscuits, which seem to have been overlooked so far in this cornucopia of varieties.

forwarding details are to follow.

 

[F Flinstone]

This thread is drifting towards the rights and wrongs of Biscuit jointers, and which one makes the best dunker I prefer "Ginger Fingers" but its not very PC, because of people with that colour hair get very annoyed at mention of the word Ginger, although a Broad called Rodgers didnt mind.

 

[sunnybob]

She wasnt too happy being called "a broad" though.
That would have earned you a high heel through each instep.

She is the originator of my all time favourite quote.
On being asked what it was like dancing with the best dancer the world had ever seen, she replied
"I did every step he did, at the same time and speed, backwards, and all the while wearing high heels"
=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>
My daughter is named after one of her film personas.
anyway, back to to biscuits now, nothing to see, move along.

 

[AES]

This thread is without doubt the biggest load of old cobblers that I have ever seen here! I hesitate but I could (almost) call it "half-baked"!

It's about time you "islanders" got with it and all lifted your eyes to and beyond the far horizons. Come ON boys and girls.

It's a well known fact that the late (sometimes lamented) Mrs. T correctly identified the members of the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule ("National Technical High School") in Zurich as "the Gnomes of Zurich". She was dead right, 'cos they're all little glasses-wearing gits running around with little pointed 'ats on.

Anyway .... What is much less well known is that during the hard days of the 1940s, ETH got a Governmental directive to ensure the steady supply of REAL biscuits ("cookies") by developing an ersatz recipe to ensure no future shortages. This they did, and although all the details are still a secret, it has slowly leaked out that amongst the "proper" brown flour is included a liberal helping of bird seed and saw dust (but ONLY birch saw dust you understand).

Having developed the recipe and made small test batches in their labs, the Gnomes duly shipped the recipe under armed guard on a special train to the master bakers of Bundnerland, home of the (in)famous Bundner Nusstorte (otherwise known as "very tasty, but the driest and hardest tart in the world").

Mass production started immediately and the result was a rock-hard "oatmeal biscuit" which had only one failing - if accidentally dropped, it could quite easily shatter the flag stones which were common on many Swiss kitchen floors at that time.

So then came the genius touch. Samples of the finished product were shipped back to the Gnomes, again amid the toughest possible security. Said Gnomes duly developed a new apparently monocoque but actually highly frangible packaging - apparently absolutely pristine when on the supermarket shelf, but once one had (finally) broken into the packaging, one had in the hand an apparently complete, leaden-heavy "dirty brown" slab of what might have been called biscuit - BUT then, as soon as it was dunked in high-strength coffee (NEVER tea please, this is Switzerland remember, and proper tea is a complete unknown here) the resulting molten lump completely disintegrated into a disgusting sludge in the bottom of the cup! AND unless the highest strength astringent washing up liquid was employed within 30 sec (max) of this disaster, the spoon used to fish the contents out of the cup ended up permanently welded to the cup. (As an aside, I think that this is the real origin of Araldite - another ETH by-product I believe).

Ergo: Project completed with a 100% satisfaction i.a.w. Government directive - i.e. totally USELESS for it's intended purpose of keeping up the morale of the populace! i.e. Swiss "Government" is little different to those in any other countries!!!!

OK, let's get real. I DO like LOTS of things about my adopted country, but I don't 'arf miss decent biscuits (well, perhaps NOT Garibaldis), and come to that, I miss a decent cup of dark brown builders tea too (instead of the pale insipid stuff made out of grass cuttings that they call tea here). Oh yeah, while we're on the subject, I miss "real" fish n chips with mushy peas too, so can you guys please STOP taunting me like this!