A Question On Patina's

Foolishly I've seen corn oil, vegetable oil, olive oil etc. recommended for one's knives. That's OK if you want your knife to go rancid as this stuff deteriorates. Mineral oil, food grade sold in any pharmacy as a laxative will not go rancid. It is really a highly refined petroleum oil. So it will act as any petroleum based oil will. I've been using it for years. It works well and will not stain your steel.

Just my thoughts, Tom
 
The patina will never stay the same. Like others have mentioned, it's an ever changing thing. If you do food stuff like fruit, it will darken, then you break down some boxes and it gets partly wiped off. Then you slice an apple and it's back, but a bit different. The patina changes according to what you're doing with the blade on any given day. When I gut and clean panfish, the patina gets a bluish iridescent hue, then it I cut up some veggies or meat, it gets gray again.

Patina is like life, it changes and keeps things interesting.:D

Carl.
 
Thanks. If I cut something will the patina rub off on it? Like say I cut bread. Will the black stuff go onto the bread and make it taste different?
 
Another mineral oil user here... I use it for the blades on my carbon kitchen knives, but also, I have a number of kitchen knives with just open pore wood handles I put mineral oil in a cup and soak the handles. It really has helped a lot.
 
MattyLav said:
Thanks. If I cut something will the patina rub off on it? Like say I cut bread. Will the black stuff go onto the bread and make it taste different?
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probably not bread but you may smell or taste something metallic when you cut fruit with a carbon steel knife.

carbon steel dexter boning knives are used on pretty much every commercial fishing boat in Gloucester to clean fish. I doubt that they are given much more maintenance than being hosed off at the end of the day. Maybe a freshwater rinse if they are lucky. Some are rusted pieces of steel and others are in perfect shape except for a nice almost black patina. I knew one fisherman who said they had a water bottle that had the top cut off. It was just deep enough to hold the blades of the knives and it was filled with olive oil to keep them from rusting. They would leave the knives in the olive oil when they were done with them.

when we got a new dexter (we used 1376 or 1377 wide stiff boning knives) we would stick them in a bucket of sea water to get a patina started. we didn't know what it was called but we knew that it would keep the blade from rusting. some old timers probably showed someone that trick and eventually it made its way to us. other old timers would stick the knife in a potato.

I am pretty lazy in that at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is clean my pocket knife or sharpen it. Consequently my knives sometimes go a couple of weeks without maintenance. The D-2 on my mountain man has a patina that is almost like gun bluing and has some patches of rust. When I get a free minute to do some splicing that rust will come right off. The sand that is in the fibers of the rope scratches the blade and will sand the rust spots right off.

I took a Schrade trapper to Georges Bank for 10 days and did nothing to it besides touch up the edge on a piece of medium grit whetstone I had. It has a patina that is almost black. I did all of my cutting with that knife including my meals. The most maintenance it got was a freshwater wash before I used it to cut food. No oiling of the blade or joint.

a knife, even a traditional knife, is far tougher than we give it credit for. It is going to take ages for rust to make a knife's blade unusable. A few spots of rust here and there, even on a carbon steel blade, isn't going to cause it to crumble to dust. Pitting isn't going to compromise the strength of the blade and cause it to snap in two. It may be unsightly but my knives end up looking like that anyway.

that's just my two cents from my experiences with carbon steel knives.

pete
 
jackknife said:
The patina will never stay the same. Like others have mentioned, it's an ever changing thing. If you do food stuff like fruit, it will darken, then you break down some boxes and it gets partly wiped off. Then you slice an apple and it's back, but a bit different. The patina changes according to what you're doing with the blade on any given day. When I gut and clean panfish, the patina gets a bluish iridescent hue, then it I cut up some veggies or meat, it gets gray again.

Patina is like life, it changes and keeps things interesting.:D

Carl.
Click to expand...

I'd seen in a couple of different television programs lately (both on PBS), a patina on antiques or on brass/bronze furniture hardware is often called a 'living finish', reflecting the way in which it changes over time, with use. This I think is THE PERFECT DESCRIPTION of the character it adds to a knife, based on it's 'life experiences'. :)


David
 
Wiping with Tuf Cloth seems to "lock in" or stabilize the developed patina on my carbon steel blades; but the patina has to develop before you use the Tuf Cloth. I'm in FL probably one of the most challenging environments for carbon steel.

Tom
 
I use to have a big rusting problem with my cheap swords that I was selling at the flemarket. everyone wanted to touch them and after a while the display would have rust stains on them. I found out about the tuff cloth and started using it and all of my problems went away.
 
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