My Mum wouldn't have ever let us place cutlery in this position and it didn't feel right doing this for the photograph!!

This locomotive was named after its designer Sir Nigel Gresley. He was one of the leading designers of steam locomotives in the 1920's and 1930's. This class, his A4 Pacifics, were built in the mid 1930's and were at the forefront of steam locomotive technology. On July 3rd 1938 a sister locomotive 'Mallard' set a new world record for a steam locomotive of 126 mph. This record has never been broken. These locomotives really were cutting edge.

There is a fascinating colony of leaf cutter ants in Stratford Butterfly Farm. Having neatly cut out a large portion of honeysuckle leaf, this ant is heading back to the colony.

This is image shows some of the inside components of the Colossus Computer, at Bletchley Park. It is the replica of the original machines that designed and built by the GPO. They used familiar and available components, like relays and thermionic valves. The machines were built between 1943 and 1945, and were all dismantled by 1960 and were kept secret until the mid 1970's. GCHQ have even only released new photographs as recently as 2024. The work of Colossus at Bletchley was to decipher intercepted German encrypted messages.

The photo was taken remotely by myself with the camera on a tripod using a trigger. The two halves of the pepper were suspended by fishing line and the cleaver placed between the two halves. The "seeds" were tossed into shot by my wife and the photo taken. The seeds were the only moving objects within the photograph!

We loved this colourful and unique interpretation of the theme. If you look closely you can see that each of the scissors has a different cutting pattern.

This is a photoelasticity image of the serrations on the blade of a plastic knife, taken in linear polarized light behind the subject, and with a circular polarizing filter on the camera lens. The result shows the stresses within the plastic. This is real “Cutting Edge” photography. If you haven’t tried it yet, it is easy, and great fun to do.

Up close, the cutting edge of a rip-saw looks particularly vicious.

Having my nails done.

This tool is used to cut rice on the terraces of Banaue in the Philippines. All planting and harvesting has to be done by hand here, just as people have done for generations, as using machinery would be impossible on these steep hillsides.

I spotted this large boulder stone at low tide within the harbour entrance at Runswick Bay on the North Yorkshire coast. The deeply cut straight lines on the face of the stone are uniform in depth but random in pattern. This left me with a puzzle as to how they were cut. Were they created by the force of the sea & tide rising and ebbing within the harbour? Or were they cut into the rock by sea craft tripping in & out of the harbour? Finally I settled on the the lines being cut by a tool when the stone was quarried, although I haven't seen this type of tooling marks previously.

Came up with this one when I was thinking of sayings with Edge in it. I had great fun trying to stand up these tiny 'Railway modelling ' figures, a glue stick came in handy in the end. My U3a Photography group also ran the Theme of Edge and this seems to have gone down well in the group.

The cutting edge casts a great crocodile shadow. I do hope this makes the final CUT.

I was interested in the way the blades reflected the light of a small torch placed in front. The double edge safety razor must have been a 'cutting edge' innovation when patented in 1904.

Blade of 12inch die electric bench saw. Machines was the title of a recent Ruddington and District u3a photography group meeting. We loved the optical illusion here - the saw blade looks like a strange coastline.