{"id":2787,"date":"2009-06-11T20:32:03","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T00:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2009-06-11T20:32:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T00:32:03","slug":"touchstone-not-the-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2787","title":{"rendered":"Touchstone (not the magazine)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight I have Photobucket,<\/strong> so I can explain what I learned over the weekend.<\/p>\n

I knew Touchstone Magazine<\/a><\/i>. And I\u2019d heard and read the word \u201ctouchstone\u201d many times. I vaguely understood that it had to do with testing the value and authenticity of something or other.<\/p>\n

Sam the Viking, down in Story City, the guy who owns the Viking boat, showed me how it actually works. He does some silversmithing, and knows about these things.<\/p>\n

Sam and I have similar whetstones. His is a little prettier than mine, but the shape is the same. Here\u2019s mine.
\n
\"Touchstone\"<\/p>\n

These stones are quarried from the very places where the Vikings got theirs, a thousand years ago. They\u2019re made of Norwegian schist<\/i>, and have an extremely fine grit. Not the kind of stone you want for sharpening a dull knife, but excellent for making a sharp knife razor <\/i>sharp. Such stones were a major Norwegian export during the Viking Age.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even a myth about them. As the story goes, Thor was challenged to fight a duel with a giant whose weapon was a huge whetstone. Thor smashed the whetstone so that it burst into a thousand pieces, and one of them buried itself in Thor\u2019s own forehead. A witch, called in to administer First Aid, was unable to pull it out, so Thor carries it permanently in his head, and it gives him occasional headaches.<\/p>\n

The whole story is rather complicated, and I don\u2019t think anybody really knows what it means. But there was clearly believed to be a connection between Thor and whetstones.<\/p>\n

But a touchstone is a further dimension. A touchstone is a whetstone used for the purpose of testing precious metal.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got a piece of silver, and a piece of pewter, and you\u2019re having trouble telling which is which, you can scrape them on the whetstone\/touchstone. The silver leaves a bright silver line behind, while the pewter leaves dull gray line. I\u2019ve tried this experiment myself, and can vouch for the results.<\/p>\n

The same differentiation can be made, or so I understand, between gold and brass.<\/p>\n

And they say that an experienced goldsmith can tell the proportion of precious metal in an alloy merely by observing the line on the touchstone.<\/p>\n

So now you know. A touchstone is something that tests value and purity.<\/p>\n

You knew this already?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t tell me about it. Let me think I enriched your life.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight I have Photobucket, so I can explain what I learned over the weekend. I knew Touchstone Magazine. And I\u2019d heard and read the word \u201ctouchstone\u201d many times. I vaguely understood that it had to do with testing the value and authenticity of something or other. Sam the Viking, down in Story City, the guy … Continue reading Touchstone (not the magazine)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}