Quick handle for "rusty" old knife steel

Ryan Mooney

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Found this old knife steel at an estate sale for $1 sans handle and plus plenty of rust. I'd just spent 2.5 days shuffling little bits of this and that from one container to another over the weekend (what I call "organizing" what LOML calls .. well.. she has descriptive terms for it anyway..) so needed a bit of a break and figured I could kill two birds with one stone, first I get this off of my bench and second I get to take a break.

Pear wood (salvaged from a buddies woodpile), skew work mostly, burned in amber shellac (flakes plus moonshine), and a top coat of bar carnuba buffed out. Didn't quite get the ends how I wanted them, could have turned those outer beads over a smidge more (but it ain't coming off of the steel).
IMG_20170423_181043032.jpg
 
I should clarifying, this is a steel not a knife :). You don't actually need the steel to be "sharp", just harder than the knife your using it on.

I wouldn't put that kind of a handle on a knife either, it would be ruinous to your hands :eek:. We'll get to knife (or at least cleaver) handles hopefully before to long :D


As I find myself more and more frequently doing for things culinary I'll point at the serious eats explantation as better and more complete than I could give:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/knife-skills-how-to-hone-a-dull-knife.html

Tom, I don't think it's too old, it's an F. Dick from Germany, but the trim looks to be partially aluminium from how it corroded and worked (with a bit of mostly gone chrome on the steel ring) so I would guess sometime post WW II and pre 70s. I see similar ones with the original handle (long rotted out on this one) and the guard fully intact (I had to do a bit of file work to make this one look ok) going for between $40 and $60, but doesn't really compare since this is half rebuilt.
 
The ridges on my steels have worn over time. On my oldest one...from the sixties...the ridges are almost worn away. It still works in terms of keeping the edge straight, but not nearly as well as the newer steels, which have sharper ridges and a noticeable bite that removes small bits of steel from the edge of the blades to help make them smoother . You can tell metal is being removed by wiping the steel with a damp paper towel after each use. The grey residue is metal dust.
 
Yeah there are basically two theories on steeling knives. The one is that it's a sharpening adjunct that removes small amounts of steel in addition to pulling the edge back into shape. The other is that you just use it to pull the edge back into shape (this isn't quite right because even if you just rub a knife on a hardened rod a bit rubs off, but that's the general gist). Either is valid, and somewhat depends on how you schedule your sharpening. I tend slightly towards the later and rely more on semi frequent stone work to fix any larger problems but know professional chefs who'll argue either side to death :).
 
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