I have taken up hand tool woodworking in the last couple of years and keeping your tools sharp is a critical skill. As such, there’s a whole bunch of ink spilled (and products for sale) w.r.t. this. However, if you look into the old books about this, e.g. Moxon’s and Roubo’s texts, books about the Dominy family, etc., very little is mentioned about sharpening. The consensus seems to be that how to sharpen was such common knowledge that there was nothing to be said about it. Is this accurate and if so, why did sharpening disappear as a skill that everyone knows? Hand tools were replaced by power tools with easily replaceable cutting edges where you just threw away the old, dull cutter and industrial situations made the benefits of doing so worth the cost, sure, but people like chefs, etc. still use knives which aren’t thrown out as soon as they become dull. Similarly, until fairly recently, it was common for kids, boys at least, to carry a pocket knife. Old Boy Scout manuals talk about what you can do with your knife and how to be safe with it, but sharpening it never comes up, likely for the same reason, i.e. it was assumed you would know how to do this or your dad would have already taught you.
Since blades which needed sharpening which weren’t thrown out when they became dull didn’t disappear from our lives, why did the common knowledge disappear?
This might be a topic for IMHO, but if there’s something resembling a factual answer, I would love to hear it.
I wanted to add that my mother, born in 1931, cooked a lot and never had a sharp knife younger than a month. My paternal grandmother, born in 1906, had a whetstone in the drawer, but it wasn’t particularly worn, nor were her knives especially sharp. Likewise, I never saw my paternal grandfather, who was pretty handy, sharpen anything. It seems that perhaps this common knowledge died out much sooner, but needing to sharpen your tools still would have been a necessary skill when they were young.
The other possibility is that this wasn’t really common knowledge and your master taught you how to do it and you taught your apprentices and when such practices faded into history, the skill went with it. Is this what happened?
I believe professional chefs use professional knife sharpeners, as do hairdressers (for scissors). Many ordinary people have possessions they can’t fix (cars, shoes) and for which they rely on professionals; why would a busy professional feel they also need to know how to fix their tools?
I don’t know how old those references are that you mention, but I suspect (and here I leave the realm of semi- factual answers to move into speculation) that there was a balance at one time where most people (mostly men, I guess) learned this lore from their fathers, because lots of people had to be able to do basic carpentry around the house or farm, at least from time to time; they couldn’t afford to hire the work done, due both to lack of funds and to the need for self-respect. I would guess the transition from that time towards our present-day happened in the US after WWII, with all those GIs coming home and going to college and moving into suburbia. My father, who was from that generation, did a lot of work around the house and knew how to use a lot of tools well, but if he knew how to sharpen stuff he never taught me about it. I learned how to use a table saw at his elbow, but I never saw him using hand tools much.
When I was little my parents talked of a knife and scissor sharpening service that went door to door through suburbia in a truck. It was the early 60s when we had this talk and they’d have be speaking of the early-mid 1950s when they were using the service. I maybe think I remember now that I maybe saw such a guy come by our place now and again, but that would have had to have been no earlier than 1962.
I’m a bit confused by the OP’s contention about lack of documentation. When I was a scout in the mid-late 1960s I’m pretty sure the books taught knife sharpening as well as handling. I’ve certainly used an oilstone and a whetstone a bunch as a kid. As did my Dad.
I still maintain my own culinary & pocket knives, but these days I’ve got a couple of v-shaped diamond sticks to do the deed; I’ve not used a flat stone in 40 years. Nor ever a power tool to sharpen a blade.
Youtube will give you hours of sharpening training using everything from a strop to a steel to an oilstone to the latest whizbang AI-powered iPhone compatible miracle Sharperizer-O-Matic™.
In no sense is sharpening a steel blade a lost art, nor is it something mysterious taught only by osmosis or in secret society meetings by the full of the Moon.
I’ve sharpened my own garden tools (hoes, spades) for 40 years now. It ain’t hard. It’s more challenging to put a good edge on a stainless steel kitchen knife; I use a v shaped set of whet stones and a honing stick or whatever you call it. I think I got some basic advice once long ago. It’s sort of intuitive.
The TinkerKnife Sharpener was still coming by my suburban neighborhood twice a year in the early 70s.
I learned how to sharpen as an adult, mower blades are one of the more ridiculous things. To get them sharpened was going to cost more than buying new ones and take 2-4 weeks. WTF? I taught myself as I already knew how to sharpen drawknives and a few YouTube videos really helped.
Drawknife:
I’m not great at sharpening knives though. One of my friends I lost to COVID was a master at sharpening. He taught me how to sharpen the drawknives in fact. He tried to teach me on knives but it didn’t take as well. I don’t use many knives any more and I can put a decent edge on but nothing to be proud of.
Kitchen knives, a good sharpener works pretty well. We have a German made one.
I use to sharpen chainsaw blades also. Not hard, just time consuming. I hope I’m done with that chore.
shrug Because it is unnecessary to modern urban living. Folks that like to cook can use a basic sharpening wand, a cheap sharpening doohickey and/or a service. I use a slightly pricey electric appliance on the (rare) occasion I think I they need it. Folks that don’t care as much about precision/easy/better cutting in the kitchen can use a serrated knife (that dull very slowly) or just a dull one. I had friend whose every kitchen knife you could probably stand on without cutting yourself, but it was sufficient for chunking up vegetables in her mind.
It’s just one more obsolescent skill, like driving a stick shift or being able to write cursive . Sure it is handy to know and people that need or want to will learn. But universally necessary? Nah, not really.
We have one who still comes by every once in a while. (Suburban Long Island, NY) He came by, and we had him sharpen several kitchen knives for us, a couple of weeks ago. I think it was the first time we saw him since COVID. My guess is that he does it as much as a hobby now as to make money.
I realize it’s unnecessary to modern life, but my question is when did it become so? I learned how to do it only within the last couple of years, after trying and failing for most of my life. What I want to know is when it disappeared. As I alluded to above, the skill may not have been common to people who were not in the trade. Your scythe or plow blade may need to be sharp, but probably not to the standard of a woodworker. Similarly, people still prepare meals at home with astonishingly dull knives, so perhaps the occasional honing sufficed for most.
The Scout manuals I referenced were of a 70’s vintage and I am going off my memory from 40-odd years ago. My mom has a bunch of Cutco knives and they will apparently come out and sharpen them for free. I have also seen sharpeners working at farmer’s markets, gun shows, etc.
For anyone who struggles with this’s edification, the trick for me was to learn when you’re done, which is when you can feel a burr along the edge. Then sharpen the other side until you feel the burr on the other side, then repeat on progressively finer media. I use a double sided diamond plate and a piece of leather charged with Cr02, for the record.
It’s definitely more practical in rural areas. But I’d also suggest that they are more likely to have passed on knowledge about such survivalist stuff, rather than needing a book. I know my dad knows how to sharpen a knife because he was taught by someone else.
That’s also my argument to the OP: it’s not exactly that everyone knew, but that those who needed to know would pass the knowledge down in person.
Per the census bureau: Despite the increase in the urban population, urban areas, defined as densely developed residential, commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for 80.0% of the U.S. population.
Suburban = urban in this context. For every person like you that would rather save a few bucks to sharpen their own mower blades, there is almost certainly a larger percentage that would prefer to just pay somebody more to do it for convenience’s sake. I mean, I would - I no longer change my own automotive oil, either .
Rural, I kinda agree with you. But even there the necessity is on the decline as other alternatives multiply. It’s not a nearly worthless skill, like arguably cursive writing now is for non-archivists, but it is one of declining value like shooting a gun. Hence, no longer universally passed down.
I sharpened knives and even a couple of straight razors by hand for years. But about 5 years ago, I bought a nice little machine that does a very good job in a fraction of the time. In part, I was nudged to to do this because my spouse does the vast majority of the cooking but will not use a steel on the knives, preferred to chop cutting boards into dust then asking me to sharpen the knives. That means I have to get out the sharpening equipment more often, and it just got to be too much work. We have a range of about 10 knives, from small paring to Japanese cleaver, and somehow, they all go dull at the same time. Also, some are stainless steel, which is much harder to sharpen than high carbon blades.
I also used to sharpen axes, hatchets, and shovels, but no more, as I no longer hew wood or dig ditches.
It’s a fair question. I remember learning from my scout handbook and spending a lot of time sharpening my pocket knife. I don’t think it really mattered.
As an adult I sharpen garden tools with an angle grinder as needed and kitchen knives with embarrassing irregularity. Generally speaking, nothing in my life is particularly sharp. I’m also not going around throwing stuff out just because it’s dull. If this is something people used to spend a lot of time doing, I have no idea why.
I’ve actually had this conversation with my hair stylist; the salon where she works hires a professional sharpener come in a couple of times a year, to sharpen the scissors of all of the stylists there.
Really? In what way? Not doubting exactly, but my retired hairdresser husband didn’t seem to notice anything much new in the way of hair scissors in the past 45 years.
. Sure it is handy to know and people that need or want to will learn. But universally necessary? Nah, not really.