Vintage A J Jordan 10″ Butcher Scimitar Double Shear Steel Boxwood Is 1871-1927

Marked Jordan’s Best on Persian boxwood handle made in Sheffield England (1871-1926), made at the East India Works with Sheffield and made with double shear steel and Persian boxwood. The scimitars from A J Jordan are far less common then the bullnose butcher knives, so this is a nice find. 

This knife had been sharpened in a fair bit requiring a thinning, in the process some of the AaA A J Jordan Sheffield England marking on blade has been lost. Handle has had gaps filled in with epoxy, a good solution for the gaps that can cause issues. 

Andrew Jackson Jordan was an American from St Louis who set up a knife manufacturing business in Sheffield (the East India works) and imported knives to the USA made at the East India Works and on contract for A J Jordan by other Sheffield manufacturers, this is a knife made at the East India Works with double shear steel and ‘seasoned Persian boxwood’

Double shear steel was a 19th and early 20th century steel that was made by case hardening bars of iron in ceramic boxes packed with charcoal, large numbers of these were heated for days on end at high temperatures and the resulting bars were broken up (it would break or shear rather than bend once carbon added hence ‘shear’ steel) and forged welded into a larger mass. This process was done twice on double shear steel creating a steel with a higher carbon content. 

 
This knife has been re-ground and thinned behind the edge on a large 3 foot diameter Japanese water stone wheel (kaiten mizu toishi) and then resurfaced with a medium fine finish, our take on an old style grinding and finishing technique. While the particular wheel used to refurbish this knife is typically used in Japanese knife making it is very similar to the old grinding wheels used to shape European and American hand ground cutlery. A convex face to a blade greatly increases a knife’s performance as there is less sticking as there is on a flat face and the blade does not get thick behind the edge nearly as fast as with a flat faced blade. Being that we are often working with old blades that need re-shaping and might have been rusted expect some minor imperfections, we try to give a fresh start to our re-ground blades with an eye towards their original grind style and keeping as much metal is needed on a blade when ever possible. Check out Bernal Cutlery co founder Josh Donald’s book Sharp to see these wheels in use and more about their history in Europe and Japan.