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The first cutting implements known to man never had to be sharpened as they were simply natural sharp pieces of flint that were thrown away when blunt. Only with the discovery that certain ores in the ground could be forged into metal came the realisation that if you repeatedly scraped the edge across something like stone then it could be sharpened. So early man quickly discovered he could make something that could cut or kill another human being and since then we have continued to do so with more and more sophisticated weapons although the knife is still often used. Fortunately, even in death we can retain a sense of humour and the story of the real life Sweeny Todd continues to make us chuckle. This black humour comes about from the barber who would get his customer relaxed and reclining in the barber chair before lathering their throat and chin. Turning to the blade and the strop strap he would talk about the weather or perhaps even back in those days, the inevitable question about holidays taken or being looked forward to. Sharpening fine knives on a leather strap, or strop, is still practiced today in barber shops where this type of open blade is still in use. Just as the man began to relax good old Sweeny would cut his throat in one swift movement and pull a lever to reveal a trapdoor into the cellar into which the body fell. Such is our love of the story that it was recently made into a successful musical and plenty of Italian barbers in London who still use the cut-throat blade feared a drop in business. Conventional kitchen knives need a knife sharpener and today this can be a battery or electric one as well as a manually operated device. Most have the sharpening angle already set as this is a critical degree in order to sharpen steel. As a rule the smaller the angle between blade and stone the better but the real professionals will also tell you that the type of steel also effects what angle should be used. It also seems that steel knives in the UK are different from Japanese steel and thus the angle is not the same. A blunt knife is a danger and far more likely to be the cause of any slip and cut. There is a great expression to describe someone who is not altogether with the rest of us mentally and that is to say he is not the sharpest tool in the box. It’s like saying we are one sandwich short of a picnic. For hundreds of years there were travelling knife sharpeners going about the country and using a foot peddled stone wheel to sharpen everything from householder’s knives to plough shears and any other metal object that needed a fine edge. These people have all but disappeared and the time has arrived where if you haven’t got a knife sharpener in the kitchen you have no excuse not to get one now. View a full range of knife sharpeners at http://www.smithsofloughton.com/
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