Cutting tools have been steadily evolving and improving ever since mankind first learned that stones and sticks could be handy in feeding and housing themselves. In fact, the earliest custom cutting tools were developed by early man, way before the dawn of the last Ice Age. Knives started out as mere stones with naturally sharp edges, which were useful for cutting meat into moveable chunks at the sites of hunts.

Humans gradually learned that those edgy stones could be used to cut sticks into sharp points, which were used in hunting. And, eventually, they learned naturally sharp-edged stones could be made even sharper by chipping at those edges with other stones. A variety of knives were made this way, from stabbing knives for hunting, to cutting knives for preparing food and building primitive housing.

Naturally, we have come a long way since then, but the reality is that people have been using cutting tools for almost as long as they have been using tools at all, even the most primitive of tools. Stone knives gave way to ones made out of the sharpened bones of animals.

Those knives gave way to metal ones, going from copper to bronze to iron. Metalworking and forging gave us the ability to make ever stronger and sharper knives. We even added some new cutting tools to our toolbox of humanity when metal came into the picture, such as saws, swords, cutlasses, metal spears, daggers, axes, pickaxes, and wedges.

We were moving into a whole new frontier of custom cutting tools that were available to humanity, and it was all thanks to natural human ingenuity and the response to the needs of different civilizations.

Once the Industrial Revolution came around, we began to see even more custom cutting tools available, some of which were automated, such as the giant circular saws in lumber mills. Most of the high quality, delicate, and artistic cutting was still done by small knives on wood. However, technology continued to expand the types of cutting tools that were available to us.

Along came such brilliant custom cutting tools as the jigsaw, router saw, milling cutters, drills of all kinds, punches, broachers, and high tech lathes. Today, we can cut almost any type of custom project on a cutting tool designed precisely for that very thing. Think of how far we’ve come since the Stone Age. Where will our ongoing innovation in cutting tools take us next?

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At Custom Tool and Grinding, we offer tool regrinding, reconditioning, good advice and other services for industrial clients regardless of the time of year. To find out more about our services, contact us today.