#whetstones

[iowacitypast]

Pedestrians in the rain near Whetstone Drugstore, Iowa City, Iowa, between 1945 and 1950

Creator: Kent, Frederick W.

https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Aictcs_700

[imperium-romanum]

Why did people at the fringe of the Roman empire put sharpening stones beneath their houses? Two Belgian archaeologists may have the answer. Andrew Masterson

In recent years, archaeologists excavating the faint remnants of wooden buildings built in the late first century CE on the fringes of the Roman empire started noticing a very curious phenomenon.

Beneath the primary wooden support posts of buildings identified as houses they found buried whetstones.

The stone tools – essential for sharpening the sickles and scythes on which the community relied for gathering the harvest – were buried too often and too specifically to be the result of simple loss or discard. And they were found only in one small region – the lower Scheldt valley in Gallo-Roman province of Gallia Belgica, now comprising the Belgium’s East and West Flanders, and a bit of the Netherlands.

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[iowacitypast]

Interior of Whetstone’s Drug Store, Iowa City, Iowa, 1930 ‘s

Creator: Kent, Frederick W.   

[iowacitypast]

Whetstone’s Drug Store, Iowa City, Iowa, February, 1930

Creator: Kent, Frederick W.

Whetstone Drug Store Number 3, 19 South Dubuque Street.

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[theinformationist]

Roomate is unpacking some stuff from storage and keeps finding small rusty pocket knives.

They ask me to sharpen them because I own some pocket whetstones, and I need the practice.

My pocket whetstones are smaller than my hands (so they fit in my pocket), so I am glad the knives are not normal size or this would take forever.

[girlcalledwhatsername]

Can someone with experience help me pick out a whetstone please!! They range from 150 rs to 1500 rs idk which is good