Those Yellow Bellied French Knife Grinders

MTBob said:
A guy sent me this photo of French knife grinders and I thought it might bring a smile. Next time I'm stiff from hunching over my grinder I'll be thinking of this position and pondering which is worse, vertical or horizontal!
Claude Dozorme still makes knifes with a distinctive French design. See: https://www.dozorme-claude.fr/en


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Thanks for sharing that. I had no idea. Before I read the description, I thought to myself - I bet those dogs help keep them warm :)
 
Laying in that position would have my sinuses draining, yuk. Perhaps that's how they lubricated the wheel!!!
 
So, after looking at these photos again, I wonder:
- How did they decide to grind knives in that position? Did they make a gradual shift from vertical, to 45 degrees, then 30 and then finally flat...or,, just go from vertical to horizontal? I can just hear it now - "Hey hold my Merlo and watch this", and boom he's grinding on his belly.
- Did all the wheels contain the same grit? Seems unlikely. So, did they have various stations like this for each grit size... or, did the grit size change within the group of grinders and they just passed the knives to the next guy with a finer grit wheel? Or, did the French just use 50 grit and figured it was good enough?
Oh, it gets better. I found this while reading about the town of Thiels where these photos were taken - "On top of the cold and humidity, the noise of the machines is loud and, if the grinding wheel explodes, the cutler is projected to the ceiling, with a little chance of survival."
 
MTBob said:
So, after looking at these photos again, I wonder:
- How did they decide to grind knives in that position? Did they make a gradual shift from vertical, to 45 degrees, then 30 and then finally flat...or,, just go from vertical to horizontal? I can just hear it now - "Hey hold my Merlo and watch this", and boom he's grinding on his belly.
- Did all the wheels contain the same grit? Seems unlikely. So, did they have various stations like this for each grit size... or, did the grit size change within the group of grinders and they just passed the knives to the next guy with a finer grit wheel? Or, did the French just use 50 grit and figured it was good enough?
Oh, it gets better. I found this while reading about the town of Thiels where these photos were taken - "On top of the cold and humidity, the noise of the machines is loud and, if the grinding wheel explodes, the cutler is projected to the ceiling, with a little chance of survival."
Click to expand...
Wow! I wonder how fast those big wheels were spinning. I would have thought that they would be turning kind of slowly, not like the thousands of rpm's that our angle grinder discs move and that can happen.
I bet it would sure get everyone's attention though. o_O
 
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