User:TeeTylerToe/sandbox6

Steel Types

Moving from the bronze age to the iron age, people added carbon to iron to make steel. Carbon is the defining ingredient in all steels, so "carbon steel" doesn't mean a steel with carbon, which is all steels, it usually refers to a high carbon steel, which is the classic high end European knife steel. Now, breaking from tradition, the internet hive mind orthodoxy is that the one and only rule of knife blade materials is the harder the better, rockwell hardness for instance. A 60 hardness blade is better than a 50, and a 70 is better than a 60. One more traditional idea, is that you choose a relatively soft steel that deforms easily rather than cracking from brittleness. Another benefit of this

honing steel

The theory of the honing steel is that using the honing steel "re-aligns" the blade. Whenever you cut something with a knife, there's a chance that the knife's contact with the other object (usually, unavoidably, the cutting board) will plastically deform the cutting edge, leaving small indentations, or bumps, leaving the edge in an imperfect state. The idea of the honing steel, is that it deforms(burnishes?) the new bumpy imperfections back into a sort of true, reducing the imperfection in the blade. This, thought to be a non abrasive process that doesn't remove metal from the blade is in contrast to other abrasive processes, such as honing or sharpening the blade edge.