Obsidian Knife - pictures found on web

[swright81076]

I've been googling knife scale ideas after picking up the beautiful blade from Hillbill. He aslo gave me some Turkish walnut burr and brass pins :thumbup:

During my googling, I came across something stunning from a chap called adrian65 at a lapidary and gemstone forum (via google images), anyway, I thought you guys might like to see it.

By the sound of things, the blade doesn't have an edge, just highly polished so its a display piece.

Enjoy:

 

[Niels]

That's a very nice knife. I wonder how it would fare at carving feathersticks

 

[Mesquite]

Now that is one beautiful knife

 

[HillBill]

Nice.... obsidian is very brittle, which is why he wont want to thin it too much... that stuff can break if you give it a funny look

 

[crosslandkelly]

Stunning looking ornament.

 

[plastic-ninja]

Weirdly I have had two conversations recently about uses of obsidian.
First one was with an experimental surgical equipment technician who is trying to manage laminated blades for surgeons with a core of obsidian.He told me that obsidian flakes are the sharpest blades in nature with superfine edge.Only downside for him was the brittle nature , hence lamination.
Second one was a friend who has just returned from Mexico following some research on the Aztec culture.He said that they were superb at working obsidian to a very fine edge for use as knives , lance , dart and arrowheads.One of his colleagues had cut himself on a shard from what they assumed to be a blade from a sword , made from wood with pieces of obsidian set into both edges.
Scary stuff this nature innit?
Simon

 

[treefrog]

Great looking piece, but only of use north of the wall

 

[swright81076]

Great looking piece, but only of use north of the wall

Haha. Looking forward to third season.

touched by nature

 

[treefrog]

Haha. Looking forward to third season.

touched by nature

…and The Winds of Winter being released too

 

[swright81076]

…and The Winds of Winter being released too

Got all the books on my kindle, not started then yet
Thoroughly enjoyed the TV series though.

touched by nature

 

[Shovel]

The aztecs would make swords out of wood, and then put obsidian flakes inside. Very sharp, obsidian is. It's illegal to hunt with in my area. Dunno why though.

 

[Craig88]

great looking knife. Obsidian looks great polished up like that

 

[Elen Sentier]

Second one was a friend who has just returned from Mexico following some research on the Aztec culture.He said that they were superb at working obsidian to a very fine edge for use as knives , lance , dart and arrowheads.One of his colleagues had cut himself on a shard from what they assumed to be a blade from a sword , made from wood with pieces of obsidian set into both edges. Scary stuff this nature innit? Simon

Yes indeed, I heard about this many years ago. This is something like what we read back in the 60s.