A metallurgist comments on knives.

"My Favorite Kitchen Tools" by Kenneth Odle (80/2:22) prompted me to write (for the first time). I am a metallurgist by profession, and I wish to correct some errors in his discussion of knife steels.

Carbon steel and stainless steel knives have the same range of hardness; that is, you can find harder and softer carbon steel and stainless steel blades, but they all will be within a range of about 45 to 60 Rockwell "C" hardness.

However, I've found that good stainless steel knives tend to be softer than good carbon steel knives. Even at the same hardness though, I've found that carbon steel knives are easier to resharpen and hold an edge better than stainless steel knives. They also are cheaper!

However, you have to watch out for corrosion. I wouldn't put any knife into the dishwasher though, because it is dangerous and hard on the handle.

The article "The Art and Science of Sharpening" by Art Horn in (79/4:67) was excellent. Some of the metallurgy was a little inaccurate, but that didn't detract from the article. I have since bought an Accusharp "scraping" type sharpener, and I really like it for softer blades. (If you can see knife blade material shavings coming off, the blade is soft enough for this kind of sharpener.)

For harder blades, I use stones and periodically dress the edge with a sharpening "steel." Steels were not covered in the article, so I will make some comments here.

A sharpening steel is, generally, a long thin cylindrical bar of hard steel, the surface of which is scored with many small grooves. It has a handle. It is drawn along the edge away from the knife, and the purpose is to produce a hard thin burr on the edge. Microscopically, material is dragged toward the edge by the steel, thereby work-hardening it. (Work-hardening is the process of hardening a material by working it. If you bend a paper clip back and forth, before it breaks, it will be harder to bend. It has been work hardened.)

The burr so produced on the edge is now harder than the parent metal, and will stand up to some cutting before it needs to be "steeled" again. After a number (20-50) of steelings the blade then needs to be reground using stones.

I've found COUNTRYSIDE to be most informative. We had been reading it for several years when we lived in the Boston area. When I was transferred last year, we took the opportunity to buy a 75 acre farm in southeastern Pennsylvania. I love it.

COUNTRYSIDE is like a hardcopy version of a USENET newsgroup. I've done some searching (surfing) through the Internet, and found very little of anything similar to COUNTRYSIDE, though. It hasn't been an exhaustive search. I did find something called "Backwoods Home Magazine" at http:/ /www.snowcrest.net/backwood/. It has some interesting links that I haven't really explored yet.