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Period pocket whetstone.

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What about using the flat wider side of a gun flint? The flint takes steel off the frizzen, and removing steel is how a stone sharpens a knife.....
Ive tried with a large musket flint. Flints are very smooth, they wont repair a neglected edge in this lifetime, however, they will refine an already sharp edge to razor sharpness
 
They sure did. My own interest is primarily the trans-Mississippi west of the 19th century, so I'll let the experts tell you about accoutrements further east or from an earlier time. However, here is a quote from George Frederick Ruxton's Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, published in 1847:

View attachment 150387

Note the reference to "a little buckskin case containing a whetstone." This image of mountain man Jim Baker was painted in 1935, and the beadwork looks typical of the later 19th century, but the artist worked for a museum in Denver and had access to the collections. He probably used actual artifacts to copy in his painting. It illustrates what I believe is a whetstone case, attached to the front of that "pocket bag" hanging from Jim's belt:

View attachment 150388
The western Indians carried whetstone cases very similar to the one in the portrait of Jim Baker. Here is a nice example from one of the auction websites: Arapaho Beaded Awl and Whetstone Cases

I can't say for sure where they got the stones. Edwin Thompson Denig, the bourgeois at Fort Union, said the typical trade knives were of "soft steel," so they were likely pretty easy to sharpen. This is from the Earl of Southesk's Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains:

View attachment 150389

We wonder just how "random" that stone might have been. Antoine may have known just what to look for. My brother has a razor hone that belonged to our grandpa, and it may have belonged to his father before him. It is a chunk of petrified wood, turned to a hard, dark stone. You can see the rough surface of the wood on one side, but the other was somehow worked flat and smooth. Not perfectly flat, but close enough. My dad said they got pieces of petrified wood out of the creeks in Alabama, but I have no idea how the stones were smoothed and flattened.

Interesting topic!

Notchy Bob
Some sixty years ago, when I took a little college, and old instructor in the tool shop told me that rubbing a whetstone on a cement floor with water would cut it. One of my dad's friends had gave me an old sheep shearer's stone and they were made out of hard Arkansas rock. It was quite rounded so I took it there with water where there was a drain in the shop, and it flattened it beautifully. Fact is I've used this same idea on my sidewalk alongside of our house. It works on Carborundum stones or hard or soft Arkansas stones equally well. I would think that this could be applied to petrified wood equally as well, I've just never thought of trying it.
Squint
 
Some sixty years ago, when I took a little college, and old instructor in the tool shop told me that rubbing a whetstone on a cement floor with water would cut it. One of my dad's friends had gave me an old sheep shearer's stone and they were made out of hard Arkansas rock. It was quite rounded so I took it there with water where there was a drain in the shop, and it flattened it beautifully. Fact is I've used this same idea on my sidewalk alongside of our house. It works on Carborundum stones or hard or soft Arkansas stones equally well. I would think that this could be applied to petrified wood equally as well, I've just never thought of trying it.
Squint
Arkansas boy here. There is no single rock here in the state. However, novaculite is often thought of when discussing whetstones. It comes in several grades and is a bit costly.
 
Some sixty years ago, when I took a little college, and old instructor in the tool shop told me that rubbing a whetstone on a cement floor with water would cut it. One of my dad's friends had gave me an old sheep shearer's stone and they were made out of hard Arkansas rock. It was quite rounded so I took it there with water where there was a drain in the shop, and it flattened it beautifully. Fact is I've used this same idea on my sidewalk alongside of our house. It works on Carborundum stones or hard or soft Arkansas stones equally well. I would think that this could be applied to petrified wood equally as well, I've just never thought of trying it.
Squint
I always appreciate @Howard Pippin 's comments. Keep 'em coming, Squint!

I found this short article and photo in a back issue of The Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Fall 1975), p. 11, and thought it might be of interest to readers of this thread:

Knife & Whetstone.jpg

That oblong object second from the bottom on the left side is a whetstone, and the item in the lower right corner is its rawhide sheath. Using the ruler at the top of the image as a reference, I calculated the whetstone's size at roughly 6" long by about 1.4" wide. I don't know the thickness. Also note the comment in the next to last paragraph: "The ordinary Indian household sharpener was often a flat round polished stone of the type that could be found in mountain streams." Pretty much what Loyalist Dave and Appalachian Hunter were talking about in their posts.

The knife is a big one... using the ruler as a reference again, the blade appears to be about 9.6" long, with a total or overall length of about 15.1". The buckle (or more properly, the "belt plate"), with the eagle facing the viewer's left, looks to me like the Model 1874 Officer's Belt Plate. The text indicates these items were found with a number of Indian head pennies dating from the 1860's to 1882, so this outfit may be a little "late" for the pre-1840 era that interests a lot of forum members. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a whetstone and case like this might have existed 30-40 years earlier.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob
 
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Whetstones were commonly sold in the 18th century - you often see them listed as “Turkey stones.” (We could do a whole thread on the use of “Turkey” as shorthand for “oriental” or “exotic.”) A 1772 invoice for Elkanah Deane in Williamsburg lists “1 Turkey Stone free of flints 7 Inches long & 3 broad.” There’s a paper on 18th century sharpening here: OldTools Archive

Jay
 
Whetstones were commonly sold in the 18th century - you often see them listed as “Turkey stones.” (We could do a whole thread on the use of “Turkey” as shorthand for “oriental” or “exotic.”) A 1772 invoice for Elkanah Deane in Williamsburg lists “1 Turkey Stone free of flints 7 Inches long & 3 broad.” There’s a paper on 18th century sharpening here: OldTools Archive

Jay
Great stuff, Jay!

The Old Tools Archive post is very comprehensive. I would have never known what a "Turkey stone" was if I had not seen it here. Now we know.

Thanks!

Notchy Bob
 
We have sort of several issues going on here. FIRST a lot of folks want to appear "period correct" by using primitive items even if wrong. As others have said whetstones were available. Grinding stones for axes, etc. were all in existence. Whetstones were a trade item. A few years back someone said they sharpened their knife with a "Genuine Wyoming river stone", well that sure sold well. Within a flash every single re-enactor worth his salt had to have a "Genuine Wyoming Riverstone" to use to keep his favorite pig sticker razor sharp. So be happy and just use a regular, small whetstone. Make a small leather pouch for it as noted in prior posts. The soft steel "trade knives" I've done some research on this and it is my conclusion (which means opinion only) that the Wilson butcher knives were made of better steel than the "scalping" knives used by NDNs and the mountain men carried Wilson butcher knives if at all possible. They were best for skinning beavers and buffalo. John Astor came from a family of Butchers and he knew a good knife pattern when he saw it. There isn't much evidence mountain men carried a second knife used for skinning beaver. What would you prefer to skin a beaver? A butcher knife or a scalping knife?
The trade knives of soft steel. The inventory lists also have files and the trade knives were often sharpened with files and on only one side- better to prevent gouges in a buffalo hide. These knives often end up with blades looking like a fish fillet knife- not from usage but from the soft steel and using a file to sharpen them. The filing was used like a draw file- lengthwise along the edge.
Now. mea culpa: although NDNs used files, they also used whetstones. In the 1870's NDN sheaths were heavily decorated with multiple rows of brass tacks and the knives often had curved blades- which created an empty space inside the sheath- in the front of the blade. There are a few sheaths found that had a pocket inside the sheath with a small whetstone in the pocket. I should also add that Wilson did make a skinning knife during the rendezvous era and it was on the inventory lists. There are no Wilson catalogs I've found that date that far back but Wilson catalogs from the 1850's have that model shown and it looks close to the modern Dexter beaver skinning knife.
Finally, the mountain men were there to skin beaver. They used firearms to fight off hostile NDN's. They didn't engage in hand to hand knife fights with hostile NDN's. The NNDN's were after their gear so if outnumbered, the mountain men "ran fer life" leaving their goods for the hostiles to fight over among themselves. A few men carried fighting knives but they tended to be brigade leaders rather than regular trappers.
 
Yeah the double N was a typo on my part. Now a days we all have to use "New speak" George Orwell. Funny thing is- I spend a lot of time on Reservations and guess what they call themselves? And BTW I really like most of the NDNs I have had the pleasure to meet. I like the tribal laws as well- better than ours, IMHO.
 
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