A Sharp Knife Is Essential

“If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln.

That is a doggone good quote about preparing!  I assume the same logic holds with knives.  As we get ready for chicken butchering, I always take time the night before to ensure that our arsenal of butcher knives are very sharp.  A dull knife is dangerous as it requires more effort to cut through muscle, cartilage and bone.  A dull knife makes your job much harder and will tire you out faster due to that additional effort expended.  Sharpening my knives always makes me think about my grandfather.  He kept a pocketknife in his pocket and always kept it sharp.  He had a (regular house) brick in the bed of his truck that he'd use in place of a whetstone.  He would spit on the brick and sharpen his knife that way.  It really worked.  He always had a sharp knife.

We use Chicago Cutlery knives.  It is a quality knife with rigid construction, wood handles, and they tend to keep a good edge.  If you take care of them, they'll last a lifetime.  They are affordable, too.  I have a smallish Rubbermaid container that I keep an old towel, a piece of some old blue jeans, my whetstones and a bottle of honing oil.  I get that container down and unroll the towel on the counter.

A couple or three drops of honing oil on both whetstones, and we're ready to go.  I begin to run the knife against the whetstone with the coarsest texture at a gentle angle.  I do that motion for a while and then switch to the other side of the knife.  Then I switch to the finer texture whetstone and repeat the process.  After I've done that for a while, I rub my thumb (carefully) on the knife's edge.  If it feels sharp, I test it on the hair on my arm.  

If it is sharp to my liking, I then use the sharpening steel to smooth out any rough edges.  That knife is then ready for the chickens.  I repeat for all the other knives.

Once done, we are ready.  The knives will get a lot of use.  The small knife is used to cut the neck so that the bird bleeds out.  That involves cutting through some feathers.  The other knife is used to cut the feet off as well as eviscerate the bird.  I'll keep the sharpening steel with me during that process to keep it sharp.

Once that is done, I know we still will be cutting up the chickens into parts (2 breasts, 2 wings, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, and the neck and back and ribs.  That involves a lot of heavy duty cutting so the knives must be extra sharp.  I'll re-sharpen them so they are up to the task.  Tomorrow, we butcher.  We'll show you the whole process!

Grandpa's Pocketknife

Back in September 2012, I posted this: Pocket Knife Post from 2012  It is about pocket knives.  I came into possession of a pocket knife recently that reminded me of that post.  Here is the knife:

My cousin, Patrick, mailed me a package containing this knife.  It belonged to my grandpa.  He called it his couteau (knife in French).  I didn't recognize the knife, but looked on the Internet and discovered that it is a Remington pocketknife, likely manufactured in the 1930's.  The acorn shield on it tells you that one of the blades is a leather punch.  It is the blade on the left hand side below:

Remington Arms Company manufactured pocket knives for Boy Scouts.  In the above link, I have a photo of my scout knife.  It is very sad to me that 2020 finds the Boy Scouts in bankruptcy.  That is a story for another time.

Not many carry pocketknives any longer.  I use one daily at work, so I carry one.  I carry a cheaper "throw-away" knife that clips to my pocket.  I probably go through two or three a year.  They aren't meant to last like quality knives of the past.  I don't want to carry knives like my grandpa's as I would hate to lose it.  Also, you risk getting it taken from you by the TSA if you are boarding a plane.

I can distinctly remember my grandpa always having a pocketknife with him in the pocket of his coveralls.  After he retired, he'd drive out to the farm and watch the rice harvest.  His truck would drive in and a cloud of dust would billow up and cover us as we sat underneath a big cottonwood tree seeking shelter from the hot summer sun.  The whine of the combine engine roared in the distance.

My grandpa would walk up to us and say, "How's it going, Old Top?"  He always called us "Old Top."  He would sit on the grass next to us and set an old, worn brick down in the St. Augustine grass that grew around the old homeplace we waited around with the rice truck.  He'd reach in his right front pocket and pull out a pocket knife (probably the one shown above).  He would spit on the brick, open the knife, and begin a slow, rhythmic motion of sharpening the blades.  The knife rubbing against the wet brick would make a scraping sound and a fine orange sand would appear from the brick, soon darkened somewhat by the blade.  He'd shave the hair off his arm in a spot to gauge the sharpness of his knife.

Knives were everyday tools back then.  Why, you could whittle a stick while passing the time (no cell phones).  You could clean your fingernails or dig out a splinter from the palm of your hand.  You could open a can of Steen's cane syrup.  You could clean a squirrel or skin a catfish.  A man without a pocket knife was like a fish without water or rice without gravy.  True story:  One time my grandpa had set a trot line to catch fish.  Trouble is, a big bird got tangled in the lines.  My grandpa eased up in his boat and put the bird out of his misery.  Then he proceeded to use perhaps this knife to cut the bird up and re-bait the trot line to catch more fish!  (You gonna fish or cut bait?)  Both!

This knife must have been special to my grandpa.  These days when my $9.99 Amazon special knife breaks, I throw it away and get another.  This particular knife broke on my grandpa, but he didn't throw it away.  One side is made of bone.  If you flip the knife over (below), you'll see it has been professionally repaired with wood.

I imagine it broke and it was too special to throw away or put in a desk drawer somewhere.  No, he wanted to continue using it, so he had it fixed.  The precision of repair is pretty remarkable.  You can see below how a slight groove was carved in the wood so that my grandpa could put his thumbnail in the indention and flip the small blade open to clean used motor oil out from under his index finger nail.

Like my grandpa's old pocketknife, I'll keep the memories of him and good times of the past around, pulling them out, spending time with them, careful to not lose them and hopefully keeping the memories sharp and in good repair.