As iron sharpens iron

[Kevin Godshall]

I use the F.Dick packing house polished steel, which is the only inexpensive non-serrated steel I've ever found. it's close enough to polished that if you weren't satisfied with it as it comes, you could finish the job with a buffing wheel.

I switched over to an F. Dick Poliron when I made the switch from sharpening my knives on stones, to an abrasive flap wheel.

We used to buy the steels and then rub them down to whatever polish we liked on a red brick, sawing it back and forth until we got it where we liked it. Using a wheel could make the steel too hot, losing it's temper and causing it to rust.

[David Weaver]

Anyone with a hobbyist type buffer shouldn't have any problem with building up that much heat, though. You'd have to get the whole rod to 400 degrees or so in a spot, which is something you're very unlikely to do. Even if it's 300, there's no thin part to take too much heat, possibly the very tip? Even at that, the very tip doesn't get used, it's tapered away.

I do make an assumption, though, that someone would work the steel around on the buffing wheel and not hold a point of it against something for a minute or two and push pressure on it.

What level of polish do you find on the oval poliron type steels? The finish on the packing house steel is something that improves a 1000 grit stone a great deal, but it is not fully polished in a mirror sense.

(I didn't polish mine, it does well enough stock)

[Kevin Godshall]

The Poliron has almost a mirror finish to it. http://www.knifemerchant.com/product.asp?productID=1397 It is smooth-smooth and takes some getting used to. Even some seasoned meatcutters that I worked with, had trouble with continually "rolling their edges over" when trying to use it, and not being used to it.

The Dickoron steels always seemed to be a bit too coarse, and that is when we would start working them on the bricks. I've personally seen guys try to take the "short cut" approach and they ended up with rusty steels which equals "scrap".

We would rub them out a bit each night, and test them the next day. If they weren't quite "there" yet, we would rub some more. Eventually, you ended up with a steel hanging from your belt that you KNEW could keep your knife razor sharp all day long, even when gutting 300 pigs an hour ( I do not lie- 2 men would "open" the hogs (break aitch bones/slit bellies/pull intestinal tracts) and 2 men would pull guts (both red and white halves) with the line running @ 626 hogs per hour. ) Keeping a sharp knife wasn't a luxury, it was survival. (And those are 2 jobs that were easy on a knife edge- ask the guys who used to bone the headmeat.........)

EDIT: One last thing: The best steel that I learned on as a newbie, and the best steel I own that everyone wanted to buy off of me, was my F. Dick 2000 Flat Steel. Even after being out of the business for a few years and not having quite the "touch", this steel always produces results. Costs a bit more, but it saved my hide more than a few times. http://www.knifemerchant.com/product...Fabm7AodvD8A8w

All done now. I promise.

[David Weaver]

I can't imagine that the people in control of the line dials would go any slower than they absolutely had to.

I never worked in a meat plant, but I worked on an assembly line in a cabinet factory. The line moved as fast as they could get it to go, and they often told us that we should be working 10% faster because the person who sold them the line told them it should be able to assemble and pack 70 cabinets an hour. When I started there, we were doing 55 (I worked there summers). When I left, we were doing 73 - it was pretty tough to keep up, and you didn't want to be the person hitting the emergency stop because you got behind at your station.

I'd rather assemble cabinets than gut pigs, though! I'm sure it was much easier.

[John Coloccia]

I believe the Philistines had primitive files, and that's almost certainly the kind of action the verse is referring to...probably to do some rough work, remove nicks/rust and things like that if I had to guess. It could also well be not necessarily a mistranslation as much as a misunderstanding, or simply a bit of poetic license, stemming from the fact that, as George said, the Philistines possessed the technology to do such things. The fact that they may not have used an actual piece of iron exactly to sharpen as we consider it is probably not as important as the idea the verse was trying to convey. Anyhow, my opinion is that it's probably a mixture of a misunderstanding of the technology, a bit of poetic license, and a bit of truth.

[Harold Burrell]

On more than one occasion in this thread there has been statements made to the possibility that here was some sort of mistranslation in the text of the verse referenced in the OP.

Unfortunately...try as I might...I cannot seem to come up with any way to refute that idea without it coming off as "religious".

However, if others here are allowed to question the authenticity of the text, I feel as though I would not be "crossing the line" if I tell you that the wording and translation are correct and reliable.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Harold, I think you misunderstand the message that folks are trying to get across. The text might be translated correctly, but it is quite likely that the translators were scholars. During much of the time that translations were made scholars were sheltered from those doing any type of manual labor and were unlikely to understand very much about any of the trades. Think of cloistered monks and illuminated texts. Alternately think of Diderot's encyclopedia and the huge number of technical errors in describing many of the trades and what they did.

[Harold Burrell]

Harold, I think you misunderstand the message that folks are trying to get across. The text might be translated correctly, but it is quite likely that the translators were scholars. During much of the time that translations were made scholars were sheltered from those doing any type of manual labor and were unlikely to understand very much about any of the trades. Think of cloistered monks and illuminated texts. Alternately think of Diderot's encyclopedia and the huge number of technical errors in describing many of the trades and what they did.

Oh...I apologize if my post was not clear. The translation is reliable, because the Hebrew text is clear. In other words, the Hebrew clearly reads "iron sharpens iron". Granted, the writer of Proverbs (Solomon) might not have been well learned in the art of sharpening...but he was anything but cloistered. He had grown up in a Warrior's household.

My point is, I think the text and it's history have merit. It is more likely that we are not totally familiar with the implements and methods to which he is referring...and less likely that there was some sort of error in the original -> transmission -> translation of the text.

I just find it interesting that we are so quick to question (and try to conform) one of the oldest written records of a sharpening method, simply because we don't think they had that technology. What do we base those assumptions on? How and why would we think that they did not have the stuff to do that...when we have a written, contemporary document that says otherwise?

Could it have been a technical error in describing a trade? Possibly. Then again, possibly not.

Here is another historical reference that was written a generation or so before the one in Proverbs:
1Sa 13:20-21
(20)
But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock.
(21)
Yet they had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.