Yes! My dad would carve meats such as roasts and turkeys, and he had a method for using the sharpening rod that we all loved to watch and hear.
My dad worked at his father’s grocery store growing up, and back in those days, they sold a lot of meat, so my father became well acquainted with all cuts of meat, and how they should be cut. I was puzzled growing up, how he seemed to know everything about this cut or that cut, even though he was a terrible cook. (My mother did all the real cooking). But he would buy the meat and carve it up when it was ready. I did not know he had spent a few years cutting meat at his father’s store.
Whenever the meat was cooked and ready, my dad would sharpen the knife expertly each and every time he had to cut meat, and the sight, sound, and the way he did it so easily and expertly, often smiling and engaged in conversation with someone, topped off with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, not even looking at what he was doing. To us six kids, it just made us want to watch. There was something completely oddly appealing or even magical in the way he did it that simply delighted us.
He would hold the carving knife in his left hand, his elbow at a relaxed 90 degree angle, the knife blade directly in front of him at a 45 degree angle, with the sharp edge of the blade facing him and the cutting edge tilted slightly upwards at perhaps 20 degrees.
He held the sharpening rod in his right hand at the same opposite geometry of the hand holding the meat knife.
The carving knife and the sharpening rod would create an “X” in the front of his body, and he would begin.
Starting at the base of the carving knife with the sharpening rod on the top, he would make three quick strokes in succession on one side of the blade with the sharpening rod held against the edge of the blade. He would quickly stroke outwards, then stroke back to the base, then back outwards again. 1-2-3 in a smooth, exactly equally spaced metronomic motion.
On the first stroke back out, and on the next one back in, he seemed to avoid outermost portion of the end of the blade where it curved and came to a point, and it appeared the rod barely left the edge of the blade. But on the last outbound stroke, with a smooth and nearly artistic flair of apparent showmanship, you could see him keep the sharpening rod on the blade now following the curve, and he would finish that last outbound stroke with a flair, going up the curved end, and the follow through of the stroke would bring the sharpening rod perhaps three to six inches beyond a point of the carving knife. That last outward motion that was a little different was much the same way a hockey player would follow through on a slap-shot or a baseball batter following through on the swing. For me, it was somehow reminiscent of the easy grace with which Ted Williams swung at a baseball.
Then, in a seamless and smooth motion, with the knife still pointed outbound in exactly the same direction, he would slightly rotate the wrist holding the knife so that the edge was now pointed downwards at a 20 degree angle, and if you watched carefully, you could see his left elbow (the hand holding the knife) bob upwards perhaps an inch or so, and his right arm holding the sharpening rod would not change at all. as he reached the end of the last outbound stroke, his right forearm would remain in somewhat the same geometry, but his right wrist would rotate inwards.
This action would cause the tip of the sharpening rod out there in space to draw a perfect circle in the air at its apogee, which would change in diameter from 3-10 inches depending on the artistic flourish with which he was sharpening. When he was simply doing a quick, business-like sharpening, the circumference of the circle would be small and precise, but with a large audience such as thirty people on Thanksgiving who might be looking on, it would be large and graceful.
Then, as his wrist with the sharpening rod rotated to begin the circle in the air, in a smooth motion, he would bring the rod underneath, back to the base of the now downward angled cutting edge, make contact with the blade from underneath, and then in a quick outward sweep, replicate the last stroke of the first three described above, following the curve of the blade all the way to the end, then following through the same way, except this now counter-clockwise circle would be much larger, coming back the base of the carving knife to begin the three stroke process again.
As it traveled in a circular motion through the air, about a foot over the knife, he would rotate the knife with his left hand so the cutting edge was again pointing upwards at a 20 degree angle, and he would expertly time the circle being made by the sharpening rod so that as the described circle reached the very bottom, the sharpening rod met the edge of the blade perfectly in an outbound direction to seamlessly begin the three-stroke process again.
My dad was not an athletic man. His whole life, I never saw him engage in any kind of competitive activity at all. He didn’t watch sports, and wasn’t conversant in any way about sports. As far as I know, he never even played any sports. He could work for four hours straight in a 100 degree crawl space in an attic, or work eight hours straight shoveling gravel and mixing concrete, but I never even saw him set foot in the pool he had built for us.
But when he sharpened that knife, he seemed transformed, almost a different persona. And he did it so smoothly using small motions of his wrist and right elbow for nearly all of it that it did look like the movements of an athlete.
Visually, it was quite entertaining to us, but the sound of it was I think what really made it oddly attractive. I will try to phonetically replicate the sound, and will likely fail, but since this was one of the most attractive aspects of this obscure task, I feel compelled to try.
The first two strokes on the top of the blade that fail to follow the curve, out and back on the straight portion of the blade make this noise: “schiwika”. The last stroke outbound in that trio of strokes that follows the blade makes a smooth but more abrupt “Schwik” sound. The three strokes together make a pleasing and rhymical “Schwicka-Shwick” sound.
The last stroke, coming from underneath, makes a wonderful, smooth, and ringing “Schwing!” sound!
There is a pause between the last, ringing “Schwing!” stroke, that seems nearly as long as the first three quick strokes, before he begins again. So, the whole sound seemed like this:
“Schwika-Schwick-SCHWING!...Schwika-Schwick-SCHWING!...Schwika-Schwick-SCHWING!...Schwika-Schwick-SCHWING!...Schwika-Schwick-SCHWING!”
FULL DISCLOSURE: I worshiped my dad. I copied his handwriting, square block lettering which resembles his today. I copied his signature style, and I even aped the way he walked, which had an unusual bobbing style. I used to go to the Yokosuka Fleet Activities Facility across the street from where we lived, and hearing him walk on those echoing linoleum floors, would try to even imitate the sound of his footfalls. My wife tells me she could pick me out of a crowd of a thousand people easily just by the way I walk. So, I had to even copy his knife-sharpening method! (that is how I could examine it in such minute detail, as I sat here with the sharpening rod and carving knife to break it down...:)
What a nice story about your dad carving the bird! Thanks for writing that.
You wrote “... the way he did it so easily and expertly, often smiling and engaged in conversation with someone” resonates with me. Dad was always smiling and beaming when he was sharpening the knife at the head of the table, engaging in conversation. He made it look so effortless. I remember the sharpening process seemed to take FOREVER as we waited with eager anticipation for it to be finished and for Dad to carve off the first bit of turkey breast and skin.
“...it just made us want to watch. There was something completely oddly appealing or even magical in the way he did it that simply delighted us.” — I don’t know if it affected my sisters and mom, but that’s how I felt, too.
It was such a great male and great family tradition. My wife comes from more of a “slam, bam, thank you ma’am” family without such great traditions, so it was hard to keep it going in my own family. I am east coast and she is a native Californian and the difference between formality and informality shows in many ways.
My wife would ALWAYS sneak a slice of the skin as soon as I took it off the Weber BBQ spoiling the bird’s appearance. It didn’t matter a lot, because our dining area table was too small to carve the bird, so I’d carve it over on the kitchen counter and bring a platter of carved meat to the table. We didn’t have the formal dining room of yore where we’d have dinner at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Our feasts seemed to lose a bit of magic and mystery without that formal dining room with its very formal, highly polished dining room furniture, but they were always joyous times regardless.