[Sca-cooks] Sabatier knives

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Adamantius declared:
>>One of the great cutlery nightmares of my almost 20 years in the SCA:
>>(apart from the time I found someone stirring a large container of
>>lemonade with my honing steel),
>
>So, I guess I'm missing something here. I can see two possible
>reasons that this is bad:
>1) the iron particles caught on the honing steel will come off in the
>lemonade, probably adding some iron to he lemonade but also discoloring it
>and perhaps adding some grittiness.
>2) the acidity of the lemonade might have an effect upon the steel in
>the honing steel. But I would think if you washed off the steel soon
>enough that no lasting harm would be done.
>3) using the honing steel doesn't do very good at stirring the
>lemonade.

All of the above, plus the fact that the steel is not a tool which
you're supposed to allow to get wet routinely. It has very fine,
almost microscopic, ridges cut into its surface (these grab onto
irregular splinters, filings, and burrs on the freshly-sharpened
knife, and also "comb" the burr points -- you'd have to see a knife
edge under a microscope to really understand this, I guess), and
sugar, acids, soaps/detergents and rust are about the last things you
want in the ridges of your honing steel.

Essentially, washing it gratuitously is bad, so you try not to get it
dirty, then it can be maintained much more easily just by wiping with
a soft cloth.

And then there's the dignity factor, such as when you find someone
using your Stradivarius to crack walnuts or something... honor can
only be satisfied with blood on such an occasion ;-) .

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER