care for collector grade knives info needed

[sar5]

Hello
i tried the search engine with negative results.

how do you care and treat your collector grade knives. do you oil them prior to storage is so which oil?

Do they rest in those soft sided zippered knife cases or other location?

I read that AG Russel recommended a oil for the blade and then to wrap the blade in plastic wrap, have you heard about this and if so which oil.

Do you treat the wooden handles prior to storage?

Do you treat the leather handles prior to storage?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[CWL]

First thing. How long do you plan on storing the knives? Months or years? Decades?

If you plan on putting knives away for years at a time, you can coat the blades in Birchwood Casey RIG grease. This stuff was formulated to protect firearms from corrosion during long-term storage (years & decades).

You can also buy corrosion inhibiting paper to wrap the blades in.

Use wax on wood and other handle materials. Wax is also great for knife steels for general care & storage.

Do not put knives in their sheaths for storage.

Keep resin moisture absorption pillows with your knives.

2 comments.

1. No amount of products or gizmos do better than regular cleaning and examination of your collections pieces.

2. Anything called "collector grade" just means that the prices are jacked-up.

 

[jimnolimit]

i've never heard of someone using it for knife storage, but what about vacuum sealing them? maybe even throw in one of those silica gel desiccant packs to remove humidity.

 

[jgttech]

I am not a serious collector of anything, but as it turns out over the years have accumulated "stuff". You watch a few "Antique Road Show" episodes and you soon learn that you keep things that establish "provenance". You keep the box something came in. I managed to throw out my R. W. Loveless catalog about a month before I learned it had some collector value, after holding on to it for 30 years. I threw out any correspondence with him, or invoices, a long time ago. You learn early on that you want to keep oil from fingers off a knife and you don't want to store it in a sheaf. Humidity control is important. I moved around some, back and forth between dry and humid climates. As a result the " R. W. Loveless" ink signatures on my Loveless sheaves are blurred, compared to the crisp pristine signatures I see illustrated in pictures of his sheaves on the web. My advice to anyone who is collecting anything is to ask around early on in your career what you have to do for care and storage. You don't want to hear the words "It would have been worth a lot more if you ....". There is a struggle though between having something beautiful, admiring it and showing it to friends, and having something that is of "proof" quality and stored away under strict conditions as an investment you never see.

 

[MT Damascus]

mineral oil (i like quality butcher block oil) and Tuff cloth are tried and true for me for the metal, wood and leather