What do you do when you are done chopping?

T

thalion

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Oct 12, 2009
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I know there are a lot of topics on maintenance but perhaps there are some new insights that aren't covered there. So, I wanna ask you all what you do when you are done chopping? What do you clean and what do you oil with? Do you have to oil every time you clean the blade? I would like to keep the rust monster as far away from my M43 as possible and seeing the weather is improving, I will be off to the woods soon!
I had an idea about using lemon oil that I normally use to clean the fretboard of my guitar to clean the and keep the wooden handle in shape. Fretboard is from rosewood and I wonder if anyone tried it on satisal?
Please share your routines so we new ones can learn from experience :)
 
I use mineral oil on the blade and boiled linseed on the wood handles.

BTW satisal is rosewood.
 
Well, it depends on how clean you consider clean and how much headache you want to go through to keep the khuk looking pristine.

If you are going to use your M-43 (and good on ya for doing so:D), keep in mind that that nice shiny mirror finish is going to become riddled with scratches and develop a nice deep patina over time...a used khuk is a happy khuk (and ruggedly handsome in my honest opinion:D)

If i'm chopping dry hard wood, I don't do much for clean up. Any wood that sticks to the blade can usually be picked off with my finger nail if I go to that much trouble.

More often than not, I'm chopping green stuff. Generally every season my mom's fiance's cabin property suffers some kind of tree damage where branches and whatnot need to be chopped away. To clean my khuks after a heavy day of chopping I simply scrub them up with a scotchbrite pad and some water. Maybe a little Dawn to cut through it. Generally, if you dry them well, there is no need for oil.

However, since I usually just go ahead and give them a touch up sharpening (the wood chopping as well as the scrub pad can dull the edge a bit). So i clean up the gunk, touch up the edge with a strop and/or chakma, and give it a quick coat of mineral oil (if i use the khuk for food prep) or gun oil.

As far as wood care goes, I like Murphy's Oil Soap. Good for not only cleaning the gunk and grim of your hands out the pores, but good for getting rid of the red cakey rouge that comes with the khuk. Conversely, I have had great success using various sanding/boiled linseed oil/poly-coat stains where the wood no long requires any cleaning. Keep in mind, this can make the grip a bit more slippery when your hands are wet/sweaty:thumbup:
 
Gray or green Scotch Brite pad, hot running water, and maybe a little dish soap if it's covered with pine sap. Let it sit for a moment or two for the water to evaporate before placing it back in its scabbard.

In my experience, oiling isn't really necessary if it's being used frequently. If I know that it's going to be in its scabbard for a while I'll oil it. Any oil should work for the blade but I prefer to use something that won't hurt the scabbard; Ballistol and mineral oil are the usual recommendations, as both are fine for the handle and the wooden interior of the scabbard.
 
Dave Rishar said:
Gray or green Scotch Brite pad, hot running water, and maybe a little dish soap if it's covered with pine sap. Let it sit for a moment or two for the water to evaporate before placing it back in its scabbard.

In my experience, oiling isn't really necessary if it's being used frequently. If I know that it's going to be in its scabbard for a while I'll oil it. Any oil should work for the blade but I prefer to use something that won't hurt the scabbard; Ballistol and mineral oil are the usual recommendations, as both are fine for the handle and the wooden interior of the scabbard.
Click to expand...

Dave's advice is good! :thumbup:

If one of my khuks gets really dirty, I'll spray it down with WD40, then scrub the blade with one of the aforementioned scrubbing pads. Be careful while doing this not to remove fingers or parts of fingers you want to keep.

After that, if it isn't clean enough to suit, I'll use the hot water, dish soap and scrubber method. Sometimes I'll wipe the blade down with a rag sprayed with WD40 afterwards.

Generally the knife will need to be sharpened when the cleaning routine is finished.

Andy
 
A quick sap removal with a scotch brite pad, a few strokes over a very fine sandpaper on my 3M Rubber sanding block, a drop of oil if it will sit in it's pants for a bit. I use olive oil now as I will use my khuk for food prep:)

Mark

...and then I drink a beer, spill a little to offer thanks the Kami's, think of Yangdu and Uncle Bill and my fine friendships here:)...then drink another beer...
 
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A quick sap removal with a scotch brite pad, a few strokes over a very fine sandpaper on my 3M Rubber sanding block, a drop of oil if it will sit in it's pants for a bit. I use olive oil now as I will use my khuk for food prep
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I stopped using olive oil on any blades sitting in scabbards cause the olive oil is too greasy and thick. Granny [to the rescue!] introduced me to grapeseed extract oil for food prep and that's what the blades get too. :D

If the price makes you go :eek: relax, take a deep breath and realize you are only supposed to use literally a few drops of it for cooking or coating steel. Murphy oil or lemon juice for the handles.. It is slippery though.

Cleaning.. plain old water and then dry.. Just let the tap run a bit to get the crap out of the water especially in an urban area.
 
When you are done chopping... you chop some more until all you got is toothpicks!


But serisouly, like those before me, I clean the blade with WD-40, then clean that off and lube with Mineral Oil. I would use WD-40 liberally also before chopping following Nutnfancy's advice. No WD-40 though for blades used for food prep, only mineral oil there.

10 minutes later I would take out the kukri again and play with it and admire it fondly, which would require another wiping and lube job. Rinse and repeat. When exactly does this become a sickness or an addiction? When your friends perform an intervention?

Alex
 
I just wash the blade with hot water and dish soap, let it dry and give it some WD40.

If I see a bit of rust forming, I get rid of it with Flitz.
 
I take my sharpening kit with me when I go camping. In there I have a ziplock bag with a microfibre cloth that I put some mineral oil on. I can use that cloth to wipe down any of my knives, even the food prep ones - should be adequate to keep the rust at bay.
 
Ballistol for the blade. I use tung oil for an oil finish on the handles, the same as with gun stocks. Tung oil is the most water, rot, and insect resistant of the oil finishes. Linseed oil does a poor job of sealing out water, and it will sweat out of the wood if it gets warm/hot. Linseed oil only seals the wood about 15%, tung oil seals the wood about 75%. That's why you can stain wood AFTER applying linseed oil and not with tung. Tung oil polymerizes in the wood. It gives a better grip than linseed, AND will harden soft woods.
If the wood is dry, I'll often use linseed or lemon or Watco Danish or any rejuvenating oil prior to 5-10 coats of tung oil.
I've used stock wax on my carry pistol, instead of oil (my sweat is quite corrosive to steel) and it's never rusted. The wax won't soak into your sheath, either.
Any good non abrasive paste wax such as butcher's wax, gun stock wax, straight carnauba wax, etc, will prevent rust as well as keep sap, etc from sticking to your blade.

BTW, is one EVER truly done chopping? I can almost always find an excuse to keep chopping.
 
Thanks to all for your advice!

I can get ballistol here without any trouble and I think I will try it. WD40 is always in my toolbox as well so no problem there either. I will have to find something to use on the handle but that doesn't worry me as much... BTW, what kind of mineral oil do you use? Sorry for all the questions but things we have here in Croatia differ a lot from those overseas and I sometimes read about products I haven't a chance of getting here :)

I will see how it goes and report back once I really field test it all...

Tnx!
 
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