Whet stone in bag?

Thats another question I've always wondered about. Back in the day, did they carry a whet stone in their bag? The tools or weapons most used, even more than their gun, needed sharp edges, and you can't always rely on a proper river stone to be handy. Any info on this? I carry one too Dan.
Robby

I'm sure the mountain men carried a stone to sharpen their knives.

Others may have done it at home.

I carry a smooth cut flat file (Stihl brand chainsaw file). It will sharpen both knives and axes. This seems like a better choice....

One of the MFT Sketch books has a whetstone and small leather sheath for it that could be carried in a hunting pouch. There's also quite a bit about files that might have been used- which may explain the excessive wear seen on some knives.

I have to agree with Black Hand,I think a file would do a great job of keeping things sharp and in keeping traps in good repair,I think it was Zenas Leonard that mentioned picking up a piece of petrified wood and useing that as a sharpening stone.

Since I'm not into totally PC (though I've tried to get more towards at least correct), I never authentocated it. But I carry a small whetstone in a sheath I made from scrap elkhide in my shooting bag. If that's all I'm carrying, I want to be able to sharpen my patch knife. I'd think a file would be a handy thing to have in a possibles bag, though a bit much for my shootin' bag.

crocket, any knife that is constantly wheted will eventually get worn down. I've seen head knives worn down lopsided and mis-shapen due to frequent wheting. Fileing will obviously do it faster, but just using stones will do it just as sure. And most of the old timers when I was a kid were fanatics about sharpening their knives.

When I was a whole lot younger, I worked as a ranch hand with a 73 yr old Dutchman straw boss. He'd look at my pocket knife right after I sharpened it and say "explative, you cud ride to Europe on dat thing." There's no fanatic like a German fanatic in charge of a ranch operation in close to wilderness conditions.

Dan

Probably not in their shooting bag. Possibly in their haversack or other gear.

I have to wonder about using local stone. We've got a very hard shale or slate that's just dandy for finish work, along with a courser shale that's pretty fine for a preliminary course sharpening. Trouble for me is that stuff is all down at sea level while most hunting is up in the mountains. It's a small matter to carry a thin chunk in the bag.

Anyone else know of similar stone that might have been available, whether found as needed or packed in a bag? I can't see anyone back then buying "rocks" if they were laying around.

BrownBear said:

I can't see anyone back then buying "rocks" if they were laying around.

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some were for sale -
From the Fort Hall Records of 1834
5 whet stones http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/fthall/init_inv.html


G. F. Ruxton - 1846 description of a mountaineer

Round the waist is a belt, in which is stuck a large butcher knife in a sheath of buffalo hide, ' made fast to the belt by a chain or guard of steel, which also supports a little buckskin case containing a whetstone.

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BrownBear said:

I can't see anyone back then buying "rocks" if they were laying around.

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A whetstone is not a "rock". Naturally occurring stone, with the necessary properties, had to be quarried back then. The odds of finding a perfectly flat piece laying on the ground would be next to impossible. Today, the stone are man-made compositions and are no longer quarried.

My supposition is based on what's happening up here, and if flat is a criterion, that's the perfect description of shale and slate.

I'm also influenced by my granddad born in 1870 and reared pre-1900. An eminently practical Okie/Arkie he never owned a whet stone in his life until I bought him one for his 90th birthday in 1960. He was tight as tight can be and kind of grumped that I'd wasted good money in buying it for him. He was real picky about his knives and axes and had a selection of natural stones he'd accumulated to sharpen them with. It was kind of like an Easter egg hunt because he always had his eyes open for more.

In that spirit, I figure that only 5 whet stones in an order is the best possible evidence that hundreds and hundreds of other people were using natural stones, rather than waiting for the next visit with a trader before sharpening their knifes and axes.

Just my practical side talkin.

There's no doubt that people without a proper whetstone will use whatever they can find and accept the results. Humans make do.

Good point. The tools needed to be sharpened, and they'd use whatever they had or could get.

I suspect we're all describing the horse, whichever end we happen to be seeing at the moment. :wink:

Kind of like two guys facing each other in a canoe trying to decide which end is the bow and which is the stern. :rotf:

It's the same horse or canoe or sharpening stone, but the description depends on where you stand or sit.

Locally we have shale (plentiful), slate and flagstone that split flat and make servicable sharpening stones.

I have also seen period blades that look like they were sharpened using them.

It occurs to me that most of us sharpen knifes differently than my granddad and a lot of other folks used to. We tend to use larger stones and drag the blades across them in straight pulls, while the old folks used smaller stones and a circular motion on the blade, a little bit at a time. I know my granddad's prize stones were about the size of a hen's egg and more or less flattened, mostly from creek beds or glacial deposits. He was most interested in a regular surface no matter the texture, and avoided stones with chips or cracks. Different strokes for sure. I've played with them quite a bit, and prefer a pebble or conventional stone somewhere on my body, rather than nothing at all.

Various sizes/types of files in large numbers were on manifest list at least as early as 1700.one that comes to mind is shown in Hamiltons book Frontier Guns (not correct title) I gave this book away so do not have the correct title on hand.it is an inexpensive and top notch book on French and some English guns.

tg said:

Various sizes/types of files in large numbers were on manifest list at least as early as 1700.one that comes to mind is shown in Hamiltons book Frontier Guns (not correct title) I gave this book away so do not have the correct title on hand.it is an inexpensive and top notch book on French and some English guns.

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You may be thinking of T.M. Hamilton's "Colonial Frontier Guns" - which includes an invoice for supplies sent to the fort at Biloxy in 1701. The invoice includes (among other things) : 2,000 gunflints, 50 axes, 1000 pounds of lead (shot) for goose, 30 wood rasps, six slitting files, 33 files (rat tail, 1/2 round and flat), 1800 iron arrowheads, etc, etc.

I believe that was it and there were others as well, and estate listings of files in inventories, I do think most would probably have a good stone as well.

I've experimented with found stones. Shale or slate I have found back east is too soft; a knife will cut it. I have found sandstone that works well. I flatten it by wetting a sidewalk and the stone, then rubbing it across the sidewalk with great force using long strokes. I have also found chert that is fairly flat and this makes good fine sharpening stones but because of the hardness is tiresome to make perfectly flat.

Here ya go. Get em while they're hot! :wink: