Origin ?

[Lew]

Originally Posted by asomotif

I am not a metalurgist, but with my practical knowledge I have a few questions / remarks.

- A file is hard and brittle. not the best material to make a knife
- a file is often not as broad as this knife is.
- a file's surface is often flat while this blade is getting thinner towards the edges is away that I have never seen in a file.
So if you would reshape a file, the original grooves of the filw ould remain vissible in th emiddle but surely not towards the edges.

So my idea is that this knife is not made from a file, but maybe the grooves/stripes are caused by shaping the steel, with a very rough file.
So in fact they are filling marks

Asomotif

Knives have been forged from files for hundreds of years. Many American revolutionary black smiths used them as their source of steel which was hard to come by in those days.Yes files are quite hard but the smith anneals them in the forge to soften them up. When you forge the hammer blows spread the tapers out in the file which widens the profile of the blade being made. I collected custom made forged knives for years before getting into antique knives and I have owned many knives forged from files,rasps and even steel cable.

Lew