Obsidian knives have to be sharpened through a process called knapping, which is essentially chipping away bits of the material until you have a sharp edge. If you have an obsidian knife, you’re not going to be giving it a few strokes on a stone or in your strop to keep the edge. The first major drawback is the work that’s required to form the super sharp edge. However, it comes with all the drawbacks that you would expect. Like a ceramic or glass, this allows obsidian to form an extremely keen edge. Because of the speed at which it cools, it does not have time to form a crystalline structure and, instead, forms a glass. Obsidian is created when highly viscous lava is cooled rapidly. Learning about the creating of obsidian and how it is formed into a knife sounds like something straight out of a fantasy book. What I’ve learned is super cool but, I’ll admit, a little disappointing for those of us that wanted an obsidian pocket knife to carry.

Given how incredibly sharp and hard I thought obsidian was, it seemed like the perfect material. This led me down the road of obsidian knives. I recently had a bit of a romantic trip down memory lane and decided to start looking for a practical way to use obsidian. There was a site on my family’s land where we found dozens of 200+-year-old arrowheads that were still sharp enough to slice my fingers (ask me how I know…)

I’m sure the food was great, but the most exciting thing we did was look for obsidian pieces and arrowheads. One of my best memories as a kid is visiting family in Idaho every holiday.

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