Frost, Askham & Mosforth Table Knife Set Double Shear Steel Bone & Brass Sheffield 1850-1855

1850s made mid 19th century style full tang table knife and three tined fork marked Frost Askham & Mosforth with forged carbon steel blade and fork handled in bone with three brass pins and two decorative brass rivets.

Frost Askham and Mosforth was only in business for a few years which is great in identifying the age of this set, after this firms dissolution Mosforth went on in production at the Broad Works which employed about 100 workers, including many child laborers. Mosforth exported largely to the United States and the 1850s saw a booming business  in export to the USA, this would all change with the coming US Civil War in the 1860s but in the 1850s they were in clover. In 1865 the Children’s Working Commission in Sheffield described working conditions for childred as “cramped, neglected and untidy”

While not specified this knife likely uses a laminated shear steel in the blade which shows a ‘puddle weld’ near the bolster at the beginning of the blade opposite side as markings, almost looking like a thumbprint, this is where the hard shear steel is forge welded to the mild steel or iron bolster and tang. Forks were forged in a small mold and ground by hand and knife blade forged by hand to shape and then hand ground on a saddle grinder to finish the geometry being finished on smaller buffing wheels. Many of these process were in use for hundreds of years in Sheffield which really held its strength through the massive amount of low priced skilled labor available in Sheffield. 

Double shear steel was a 19th and early 20th century steel that was made by case hardening bars of iron in ceramic boxes packed with charcoal, large numbers of these were heated for days on end at high temperatures and the resulting bars were broken up (it would break or shear rather than bend once carbon added hence ‘shear’ steel) and forged welded into a larger mass. This process was done twice on double shear steel creating a steel with a higher carbon content. 

knife 8.5″, fork 6.5″ overall