Short History And Description Of Knives

Knives are sharp-edged (single or double edged) instruments consisting of a thin blade used for cutting and fitted with a handle. Knives can be used as tools or as weapons. Considered by some to be one of the most useful tools of all time, its genesis is considered to be two-and-a-half million years ago.

The most primitive knives were shaped by striking from rock, particularly water-worn creek cobbles made out of volcanic rock. As recent as five thousand years ago, as advances in metallurgy progressed, stone, wood, and bone blades and knives were gradually succeeded by copper, bronze, iron, and eventually steel. Knives gained importance during the Middle Ages as one of the three major items of cutlery in the western world, associated with the fork and spoon, and in this way much of the world's population is exposed to knives on a daily basis.

Modern knives consist of a blade and handle. The blade can be fine or serrated and the handle, used to grip and manipulate the blade safely. The blade from knives consists of the point, the end of the knife used for piercing, the edge, the cutting surface of the knife extending from the point to the heel, the grind, the cross-section shape of the blade, the spine, the top, thicker portion of the blade, the fuller, the groove, and the bolster, the thick portion of the blade joining the blade and the handle. The guard is a barrier between the blade and the handle of most knives. A coil, where the blade is unsharpened and possibly indented as it meets the handle, may be used to prevent scratches to the handle when sharpening or as a forward-finger grip. The end of the handle, or butt, may allow a lanyard, used to secure the knives to the wrist.

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