obsidian blade

P

porthos

H-M Supporter - Gold Member
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anyone know where i can get a surgical sharp blade. just recieved one that i bought on e-bay. i can drag it across my finger and it does no damage. its a conversation piece, nothing else. obsidian is the sharpest blade known to man. any help in finding one??
 
If you want a sharp blade, try a leather strop. You won't be dragging any stropped edges across your finger without stitches to stop the bleeding.
 
You could try knapping one yourself. Might prove to be an interesting project in of its self. A fresh knapped edge can be very sharp ,but any side force will easily snap it. To sharpen one just re knap the edge. There is good reason why every one has changed over to carbon steel blades.
 
I seriously doubt you are going to find readily made tools like this. Any obsidian blades you find are "conversation pieces". Dr. John Cotier of Auburn University dedicated a week of an archeology course to obsidian working and tools made from them. One of the things that stuck with me is that the obsidian wasn't sharpened... it was knapped. It's so sharp because it will fracture down to an edge just a few molecules thick. He also related a story of a fellow archeologist who had to have surgery back in the `80s and the guy insisted that the surgeon use obsidian blades and the wounds healed so fast that the surgeon wrote papers on it and it has since become a 'thing'.
 
Here’s the diamond blade catalog!

Catalog

Apparently they are used in eyeball surgery. Neat stuff!
 
Flint Ridge Park around Newark Ohio has a knapping class, , meaning to go some time.
 
I’ve always been fascinated by knapping. There’s some companies making diy kits I think.
 
A buddy of mine "went native" after high school and the Army. We found an obsidian boulder in the mountains. Until then we had no idea that there were ever volcanoes in VA but there it was. He broke off chucks to knap into tools and used them for native crafts.

You think metal chips are a pain in the ass, HOLY CRAP, obsidian flakes are an order of magnitude worse. When breaking a chunk off the boulder, little chips would fly out with enough speed to imbed into the skin and clothes. The bigger ones would cut you bad, the little ones would just wedge themselves in, sometimes without even a trace of blood. Then over the course of a few days the little buggers would fester and come back out. You couldn't go barefoot anywhere that he worked to make tools. It was really nasty stuff. He had a chunk of leather he used when working with it that was 3/8" thick and the tools would slice it with little effort completely through. It couldn't take any impact at all but if you handled it carefully the edge never seemed to dull.

He used them to skin a deer and it was impressive how sharp and effortlessly it cut the hide. It isn't something I would want to cut meat for consumption with though. No way I would take a chance getting glass in meat.
 
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