It’s a naturally occurring igneous rock or glass. But it’s very brittle, and not suitable for tasks that a regular pocket knife could handle.
Yes! It is the sharpest option out there. Regardless, some heirlooms will cost you a fortune, more kitschy homemade blades can be very affordable. The jury is out on whether or not knapping is more time-consuming than sharpening a steel blade, Reddit tells me it’s all dependent on the person’s skill level. Most obsidian knives are hand made by the people who find the volcanic glass themselves, and then turn it into a blade through a process called knapping – fragmenting the piece into a smaller and smaller shard until you get the desired shape. Obsidian knives can sometimes be cheaper than carbon steel blades, but that’s because they are manufactured in factories much less often. Since this glass is so good at fragmenting, you may not even see that it has chipped. Using an obsidian blade to chop food could potentially result in accidental ingestion of shards of glass. Prying it against a hard surface, like opening a beer bottle, would more than likely break the blade. The likelihood of obsidian cracking or chipping under the simplest of tasks is incredibly high. This is the absolute most brittle possible material that could be turned into a knife. Obsidian surgical blades have yet to be used on humans, as they have not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. It’s not confirmed, but certain studies on rats have found that using obsidian blades encourages quicker healing, thanks to a cleaner cut, even if that difference can only be seen under a microscope. The edge of an obsidian blade is a mere 3 nanometers thick. It’s incredible how much more perfect nature can be by just not trying at all. 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. Certain states want to prevent over-picking by making permits a requirement. If you’re ever wanting to find some cool stones (or glass in this case), make sure to check if you need permitting to take them home. To get really specific, if you’re ever passing through Yellowstone National Park, there’s been tons of obsidian discovered between the Mammoth Hot Springs and North Geyser Basin. Specifically, in America, deposits have been found in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Just to name a few: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Papa New Guinea, Peru, Turkey, and the United States of America. This naturally occurring volcanic glass can be found in places where there are, or were volcanoes. The human race may have evolved very differently otherwise. Think about it! We have some very brave and hairy people to thank for heading straight into a cooling lava field.
Obsidian can be used as a flint starter, and coincidentally, humans started utilizing fire around the same time that obsidian was utilized. The way that obsidian fractures are so sharp, that it wouldn’t even require the tool to be sharpened into anything. Obsidian blades were often found with the remains of Homo erectus, and it is believed that these technologies developed nearly 1.76 million years ago. This age is classified through the first practices of stone tool usage. The first-ever known historical use takes us into the Acheulean age. But at the same time, it is classified as a mineraloid, since it has mineral qualities, but they are too variable to be pure mineral. It cannot be considered a mineral, because as a glass it is not crystalline, whereas minerals are. It is extremely hard, but unfortunately brittle.
It’s an amorphous element, meaning that when it fractures it does so into impossibly sharp shards. High silica content in lava results in high viscosity, so when it runs it cools very quickly and turns into glass. Lapis Obsidianus is an igneous rock - ignis comes from the Latin word for “fire” - and it’s formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. In order to understand the pros and cons of an obsidian blade, we must first know where it comes from. Where can I find an obsidian knife? Obsidian is Literally Lava