Surprisingly, the edge of a piece of obsidian is superior to that of a surgeon’s steel scalpel. Daniel Watson runs Angel Sword, creating artistic weapons which sell from $2,000 to $20,000. The sharpest swords in the world are being forged in Texas, where a former “bored engineer” has stunned Japanese experts with his handiwork. What is the sharpest sword in history?įormer engineer turned master swordsmith makes the world’s sharpest sword. Obsidian is used by some surgeons for scalpel blades, although this is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on humans. Obsidian can be used to make extremely sharp knives, and obsidian blades are a type of glass knife made using naturally occurring obsidian instead of manufactured glass. Since obsidian will fracture down to a single atom, it is claimed to have a cutting edge five hundred times sharper than the sharpest steel blade, and under a high magnification microscope an obsidian blade still appears smooth, whereas a steel blade has a saw like edge. The macuahuitl was a standard close combat weapon. Obsidian is capable of producing an edge sharper than high quality steel razor blades. The name is derived from the Nahuatl language and means “hand-wood”. Is obsidian a weapon?Ī macuahuitl () is a weapon, a wooden club with several embedded obsidian blades. An obsidian blade under that same microscope would be perfectly smooth and even. To be more specific, if you placed the sharpest and highest quality carbon steel blade under an electron microscope, it will look irregular and jagged. The main and only benefit of an obsidian blade is its potential for sharpness. Well-crafted obsidian blades made out of black volcanic glass has a cutting edge 100 times sharper and unbelievably smoother under an electron microscope as compared to the high-quality steel surgical scalpels and metal knives with jagged blades. At 30 angstroms - a unit of measurement equal to one hundred millionth of a centimetre - an obsidian scalpel can equal diamond in the fineness of its edge. Metals are hardened to make the crystallites (grains) smaller, but isn't that adding imperfections to the crystal structure? Meanwhile, the obsidian won't deform because the crystallites aren't aligned, so it will keep the sharper edge but it's more brittle and can shatter if dropped.Obsidian - a type of volcanic glass - can produce cutting edges many times finer than even the best steel scalpels. So the problem is due to the fact that metal is malleable, which is a result of properties of its crystalline structure. Metal can be shaped as such, but it has to be steeled periodically because it deforms. The conchoidal fractures can create an angle that's ideal for sharpness. My experience in this is based in geology, so I don't know very much about metals, but I think the issue is that it's simpler to use obsidian than steel to get an extremely sharp edge that won't deform. That's why you get conchoidal fractures, right? It's the lack of a crystal structure that allows it to break like that.
Obsidian/glass is an amorphous solid, so it doesn't have any crystal lattice. I think my confusion may be because you go from talking about a perfect crystal lattice to grain size, but I'm not sure. I don't know wether it is technically possible to make a steel edge that thin yet, but the materiel allows for it. Once you try cutting something, the steel edge will bend, and become less sharp.
At that thickness, the steel blade's serration's (the ones I mentioned earlier) are too weak, and will bend once you try to use that edge. At molecular width, it's edge is hard enough to maintain that razor edge. Obsidian is much, much harder than steel. Steel can theoretically be honed until its edge is just a single molecule wide like obsidian, but here the limitations of the metal come in to play. Steel can be honed to make that cutting edge thinner, and thus, sharper.
When you sharpen a knife, you are aligning the serrations to the plane of the edge. Those points will bend to either side of the blade through use,dulling the edge. Steel, on the other hand, is jagged on the edge, forming tiny tooth-like serrations on the cutting edge. Freshly broken pieces of obsidian make perfect, smooth edges that are only a molecule wide at their apex.
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