Do you "sanitize" your knives?

Sharpening knives & scissors etc for part of my living I have seen it ALL!
You tough guys that eat dirt and just wipe it on your pants leg all the time would be some of the first ones to :barf:

I have workers from some of those roasted chicken places around town bring in these scissors they use with this black crud in the pivots that's a combo of rancid grease and chicken parts turned black & oily. :barf:

So everybody! Be thankful that we humans have strong immune systems but at the same time don't tempt fate!
 
I hope the people who don't wash their knives aren't the same slobs who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
I hate those people; they should be pepper sprayed and kicked in the balls till they cannot procreate any more "people" as filthy as them. :thumbdn:
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
...with this black crud in the pivots that's a combo of rancid grease and chicken parts turned black & oily.
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Ever clean a grease trap? You smelled just the residue that builds up on the tools, imagine what it's like when the rest of it gets dumped in a pit for weeks.
If I used my knives daily for food prep, yes definitely clean them. Otherwise just keep em clean enough to operate smoothly/not rust.
 
Sanitation is very important, some people would argue that it is the cornerstone of modern society and the sole reason that life-expectancy rates went up so high. I mean, it wasn't really like a huge technological advent, more like using common sense. In the Civil War era for example, amputations would sometimes be conducted with the same saw that had just been used to remove a gangranous leg without so much as even a wash. Go back further in time and you see people realizing that, "Hey, if we don't just throw our waste out of the window onto the street where we walk in it, we don't get sick." I mean the bubonic plague was so virulant basically beacuse people couldn't figure out proper ways to dispose of the dead.

Hot soapy water was probably responsible for saving more lives than the invention of penicilin wound up saving. Now adays we have all sorts of chemical sanitizers, but what has really improved health even more these days is the use of disposable items. You'd never see a modern hospital attempt to wash a scalpel or syringe, yet at one point in time or the other these devices were in fact meant to be multi-use. Doctors have realized that trying to A) Kill germs and B) Ward off contamination is about futile so the best thing to do is to have a tool in a sealed package and then simply throw it away after it is used.

So given all that I tend to think about the fact that people eat off their dishes all the time, wash them with hot soapy water, and are fine. I don't perform surgery with my knife so I don't really need to worry about sanitizing it in order to not spread infectious disease, so beyond that I don't think anything more than soap and water is needed. Sure we have a lot of technological advances in the field of kiling germs, but soap has a pretty good track record for just general use.

The few times I have used a blade to say, get a splinter out or something of that nature where it's going to be cutting my skin I use alochol and then lick the blade with flame from a lighter. I don't really know how effective that is, but I've never got an infection from a cut or anything so I guess it works.
 
AntDog said:
Why would that be? What evidence do you have of this? The only difference is the lower the percentage, the more water. Why would they work any different?

I have reagent grade alcohol so that's what I use on bare steel. It will eat most blade coatings, so I use it on bare blades only. Isopropyl on the coated stuff. Doesn't seem to effect it.... And this is only if I cut something really nasty. Most of the time just dawn dish soap and water does the trick.
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Ethyl alcohol kills cells by denaturation of proteins, a process that happens more quickly in the presence of water. That's why 70% is a more effective bacteriacidal agent than higher concentrations.
 
Grindstone50k said:
Child mortality is also at it's lowest rate ever.
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And child allergies and asthma in the developed world are at high rates and skyrocketing. It's a first world problem and the potential is directly related to income as higher income equates to a higher potential of developing food and skin allergies and asthmas. Kids that have a pet and play with it on the carpet and play outside are less likely to develop allergic problems. We're too hygienic, sanitized, and sterilized for our own (really our progeny's) good.

http://fooddrugallergy.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=40

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-asthma-rates-soaring/

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db121.htm

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/allergies-rise-us-kids-government-study-finds-f6C9734851
 
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It's not a bad thing for a boy to come home from the woods and the creek so covered in dirt and mud and GOD know what that you have to hose him off before he can come in the house. Nor is it bad for him to get covered in dog hair while wrestling the dog. Unless he has lived up to that point such a sanitized life that Joe Germ or Anne Allergen causes him ill health.
 
leghog said:
It's not a bad thing for a boy to come home from the woods and the creek so covered in dirt and mud and GOD know what that you have to hose him off before he can come in the house. Nor is it bad for him to get covered in dog hair while wrestling the dog. Unless he has lived up to that point such a sanitized life that Joe Germ or Anne Allergen causes him ill health.
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Not at all, I still do those activies from time to time.
That boys mom used dish soap on everything they ate off of and bleach when nessasary.
A clean water supply from chorine bleach and toliets for getting rid of the other end are what have increased our longevity and made cities possible. Before that Beer & Wine were what made cilivization possible in the first place for large amouns of people to have sanitized water supply.
 
Insipid Moniker said:
Ethyl alcohol kills cells by denaturation of proteins, a process that happens more quickly in the presence of water. That's why 70% is a more effective bacteriacidal agent than higher concentrations.
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I'll be darned! I learn something new every day. Thanks for the info, and nice username BTW.
 
Chris Pierce said:
If by "sanitize" you mean "wipe on pant leg" then yes, yes I do.
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My BIL always said that your pocket knife is automatically sanitized each time it goes into your pocket.

I never cut anything real dirty with my knife so I never worry about it, and I'll pull it out the next day to slice an apple. OTOH I was out one time and someone borrowed my knife to clean a bullfrog, I did clean the knife after that. Now if you loan knives to people at work, they might do like someone posted one time and start slicing dead skin off of their foot! My wife gets mad at me when I mention using my knife at a restaurant.
 
There's a thread somewhere here about a guy cutting his toenails with a pocket knife. I might use more than just my shirttail in that case.
 
My knife does not go in highly infectious places, and typically I wash it in running warm water with hand soap. I don't sanitize with alcohol.
 
shirttail here all most every time unless im going to sharpen it then i gave it a good wash down .

I sharpen my knives a about 4 times a week , so i think im good to go .
 
BluesBender,
Your micarta handle can take a 10-1 of hot water and bleach to kill any virus you may have come in contact with from rat poop and urine. I also always wash the tops off of cans with a wipes or a washcloth with soapy water at least. if i can. Rat feces & urine can be on the top of your Budweiser and coke cans and lets not forget canned foods.

I recently started seeing and buying a kinda snooty Sapellegrino Blood Orange Soda as a refreshment drink on hot afternoons and it comes with a foil seal on top of the can. smart thinking.

I'm not a germaphobic man, but as I has gotten into mid life, "56" in September and have a few health issues I have learned to be nice to my self! LOL

So If you are directly dealing with Virus carriers, look at it the way a doctor or researcher would to keep things in a reasonably clean manner.
 
Well guys I gotta chime in on this one. I'm A garbage man. It aint nuthin to have a handful of squished maggots in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other!! I once heard that in the event of a nuclear attack the only thing left would be cockroaches and garbage men. I do wipe my knives down from time to time but thats because they're purty!
 
chromecrow said:
Well guys I gotta chime in on this one. I'm A garbage man. It aint nuthin to have a handful of squished maggots in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other!! I once heard that in the event of a nuclear attack the only thing left would be cockroaches and garbage men. I do wipe my knives down from time to time but thats because they're purty!
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:DConsider this stolen. I KNOW I'll use it sometime in the future.
 
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