The wooden stake, its crackling roots blazed and hissed - as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam and its temper hardens - that's the iron's strength - so the eye of Cyclops sizzled round that stake."
The purpose of this epic simile is
to reveal the imagery of hot stake plunging into the cylcops' eye
To make us barf
To reveal Homer's criticism of a violent Greek world
to demonstrate the Cyclop's injury and reaction to pain.