Bugs that eat Horn Hnadles

W

whalenk224

Joined
Apr 10, 1999
Messages
57
Did anyone else see an article about "Bugs" that eat horn handle in a recent Blade magazine? It seems there is a type of beetle called a dermistid beetle, or carpet beetle, that can lay eggs on a stag or horn handle and the larvae will chow down on the handles and leave holes in it.

The solution given to this problem was to keep the knife sealed in a plastic container with a few mothballs. I have several Blackjack knives with stag handles and I am going to give them the ziplocks and mothball treatment. The author was unsure of the effect of mothballs on metal. Anyone have any ideas on that? Also, who the heck sells mothballs?
 
In my shop i have a large wooden chest in which i store my stock of stag, horn, some woods and other natural handle material, mostly ivories.
Some time ago i discovered some very small bugs, 2 mm or so, running around in the chest. To get rid of them i soaked a piece of cotton in neem seed oil and stored it in the box, too. No more beetles or other insects so far.
Neem is a tree from india who produces a sort of small nuts. You can't eat them, but you can press an oil from the nuts which smells awful but is completely harmless to the human body and kills all sorts of insects. The indians discovered it, because it was the only tree left over after big swarms of grasshoppers (?) passed.
Today it is used as the poor man's cure against many insect parasites on humans, animals and all sorts of flora. Only the rich man has the money to buy the dangerous pesticides and insecticides produced by the chemical industrie. The only difference is, neem doesn't kill the beasts on the spot but takes ten days or so.
As i am living in germany, i can't tell you where to get it in other countries. Here, you can buy the oil, the seeds and some other neem products in so called Spinnrad-shops, who sell all sorts of natural products.

Achim
 
The fumes from the mothballs will probably leave a milky dull film on your blades. This film should be removable with a cloth and maybe a spritz of WD40.



------------------
Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.4cs.net/~gollnick
 
Thanks for the response to my post. I did find mothballs. I called Wal Mart to ask what department they would be in. After about 5 minutes of waiting for someone to answer in housewares, I hung up. My wife located some at K-Mart. They sent her to about every department before she finally found them. She was not in a good mood upon her return.

I now feel secure that my stag handle knives are safe from any invading insects. I put them in ziplocks with a couple of mothballs in each bag. I guess I will find out what effect the "naphthalene" has on carbon steel. I wiped the blades down with Tuf-Cloth first.

After reading that article, I got nervous and looked closely at my stag handles. One knife had a couple of tiny holes in it and it may just be the way it came off the animal. The larval stage of the dermistid beetle is 70-360 days - "a long time to chew on horn handles." Anyway, I could imagine the damage that could be done by an unwanted bug.
 
Aren't you going to tell us which department to look in???
smile.gif


-Cougar Allen :{)
 
Hey, I guess I did leave that one detail out! It would be pretty rude of me not to divulge the location ot the elusive mothballs.

After being sent to the laundry aisle and pesticide department, and given the wrong locations for those, my wife happened upon the storage box section. It seems mothballs can be found next to the carboard boxes and cedar blocks used for storage. I would never have found them.
 
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