Today, cutlery means utensils or tools for eating, but back then, cutlery meant a whole different type of thing. Since most foods were fingerfoods at that time, cutlers saw little use in making forks and spoons. Instead, they forged knives, ax blades, swords, lances, and things of that sort. They even made nail clippers and two-in-one blades! However, to make those things, you need skill and experience in the trade. Most cutlers got those skills from being an apprentice, or working at a trade without pay to see how a job gets done.

In eighteenth century New England, living in cities was rough, especially during the revolutionary war. Families usually contained four or more children, and money was tough to earn. P

The two main materials a cutler needed were iron and coal. Melted up, they would make steel, the hardest metal known to man at that time. The process where steel was melted in charcoal was actually called cementation. Colonists used to pile the iron bars in ground-up coal and let it sit for seven to ten days. Cementation was probably the quickest, cheapest way to make steel, yet it had its disadvantages. Cementation formed blisters and bubbles on the surface of the steel, making it more difficult to cut and weld. Cemented steel also lacked uniformity; the steel was soft on the inside and hard on the outside. This steel was usually used to make axes and knives.

The next step of making a knife was the grinding stage. The cutler's grindstone was a large sandstone disk that was half exposed in a water trough. An apprentice would turn the crank for hours on end in order to spin the wheel. The grinding step insured that the metal would be sharp. After the grindstone, the same mechanism of cranks and pulleys was to be used for a polishing stone. First, the metal would be polished on wood, then pewter. Work usually went as far as that, but some high-class blades needed another step. Crocus powder was sprinkled on the blade, and then the blade was due to be polished again on a wheel covered with buff leather.

To get supplies for a trade was tough in the beginning. For example, cutlers either had to mine their own iron and coal or purchase them from Europe. Mining was a slow, tedious, dangerous business, but it paid off if you spent very little trying to get what you found. However, there were very few known coal and iron deposits mapped at

Some common words found in the essay are:
Boulsover American, Colonial America, Purchasing Europe, Margaret Pascal, Europe Mining, eighteenth century, money cutlery, sheffield-cast metal, iron coal, woman cutler,
Approximate Word count = 1108
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)