Got A Fallkniven A1 Pro. Need help Maintaining It?

S

ShinyLoveMachine

Joined
Jul 3, 2014
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So I bought this knife to use in the Wilderness. It comes with the sharpening stone and the case. I've kept it sharp, but I bought this to USE, not to look at. It does an amazing job, thus far I'm glad I bought this. The knife already has tiny, tiny, micro scratches near the blade; is this normal with heavy usage? It's stained/dirty from pine sap and all the wood splitting and Wilderness chores I do. I'm assuming that's where the micro scratches come in too? I've sharpened it, and it cuts as well as it always has.

That all said, I might want to clean this so it looks almost spotless again, and polish it. I've heard of different polishes you can use like Metal Glo. Also, I've been reading about the different oils you can use. I've been using WD40 but I still can't get those nature stains of ruggedness out from all the work it does. Does anyone here have advice for cleaning a knife like this? Also any advice for maintenance? Thank you all so much!
 
Get a strop, load it, use it after each day's use, and it will keep the business end of your knife (the edge) shiny and sharp.

If you want, load the strop with Flitz and you can use the Flitz on a cloth to polish the rest of the blade too.

That said....Working knives get stained and scratched.
 
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If your using material found on and even near the ground, likely it will have dirt (small rocks/minerals) attached to it. If your in an area with abundant wind, certain barks can collect and harbor wind blown sediments like sand or mineral soil.

Some wood contains silica in their molecular matrix - I don't know how much this might scratch anything.

However, dirty materials processing will lead to scratches.

Grit from use, that then is trapped in your sheath, will induce scratches on the blade, too.

It is normal for use to show up as signs of use like what you describe.
 
WD-40 is some paint thinner with a little bit of oil in it. Doesn't do squat aside from de-greasing and preventing flash rust for a day or so. Not necessary for a stainless knife. Might dissolve pine sap OK.

If the scratches are above the line of the laminated steel, it's probably because the outside cladding is much softer than the hard core. So be it.

I like to use cheap knives and not worry about scratches. Like these $3 hand-forged spring steel
knives.

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Hurrul said:
If your using material found on and even near the ground, likely it will have dirt (small rocks/minerals) attached to it. If your in an area with abundant wind, certain barks can collect and harbor wind blown sediments like sand or mineral soil.

Some wood contains silica in their molecular matrix - I don't know how much this might scratch anything.

However, dirty materials processing will lead to scratches.

Grit from use, that then is trapped in your sheath, will induce scratches on the blade, too.

It is normal for use to show up as signs of use like what you describe.
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Thank you so much for your help guys! Do you know if these stains/scratches can be polished off? I've seen guys use a variety of grit rated Japanese whetstones to sharpen and polish knives like this. Would that remove the stains and give it a mirror finish again? Does anyone have any suggestions for chemical cleaning agents? Whetstones? Or Strop stones?
 
HaHahah! I really appreciate your points you all make guys! I agree with you guys. My thoughts are is maybe just once a year using whetstones and a polishing stone to get it looking A+ again before another year of a beating. Is this a feasible idea? Will polishing stones remove stains too?
 
You don’t want to use a stone on the flats of your knife. Stones are for edge maintenance only.

What you think are stains are probably not actual stains but sap and gunk stuck on. Try scrubbing it with dish soap and a cotton washcloth. If that doesn’t work you might want to try bug and tar remover or goo gone.

Once you get the gunk off of it, you can polish it with sandpaper in finer and finer grits to get the scratches out, finally ending up buffing with something like Flitz... but I’d leave the scratches. The knife earned em.

Scratches and dings built up from honest use add character, and character makes knives sexy. Post some pics and let us have a look at it.
 
ShinyLoveMachine said:
So I bought this knife to use in the Wilderness...not to look at...

That all said, I might want to clean this so it looks almost spotless again,..
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Here's the thing you're looking at it :-)
Don't go microscopic with a used tool !
Maintainance is having an edge restored
and using every trick in the book
to keep rust away.
Most of the polish are abrasive in nature.
So it wears away the surface.
Sometimes even down to a mirror shine
depending on the quality of the steel type.
Micro scratches can be removed
and deeper ones probably in time.
If you polish free hand, chances are
that in the long run the blade surface will
be uneven.
That is why there is such a thing as a sanding block.
So that's about all that concerns surface maintainence on a working knife.
 
ShinyLoveMachine said:
Thank you so much for your help guys! Do you know if these stains/scratches can be polished off? I've seen guys use a variety of grit rated Japanese whetstones to sharpen and polish knives like this. Would that remove the stains and give it a mirror finish again? Does anyone have any suggestions for chemical cleaning agents? Whetstones? Or Strop stones?
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It would take significant work to remove the scratches and you would have to abrade (as noted by AntDog and GIRLYman) with various grits of what ever abrasive application you choose, from coarse to progressively finer and finer grits....

...but you would have to do this process to the whole blade to end up with an evenly treated surface, not just to the spots with scratches.

And then, as soon as you used the knife again, all of the time and work removing those scratches would have to be repeated to make the surface of the knife free of coarse scratches reacquired from recent use.

You might find additional info and insight in the Maintenance and Tinkering sub forum - a Moderator could move this thread over there if you request it.
 
craytab said:
Leave scratches be. There will be more with use. I remove staining with flitz. Works great.
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Yep... that and detergent for surface stains. The difficult ones... flitz or other very fine abrasive such as used stropping. Definitely don't use stones for the sides of the blades; you'll only make it look worse. I know. Skip the WD-40 although it does take off stains fairly well. Just wipe it off afterwards. Use mineral oil or regular gun oil.

By the way, I think you made a good choice with the A1 for a general purpose woods knife versus the F1. I have an F1, but prefer a slightly longer blade for general use. The best thing about the F1 is that it carries easily and as a result you're more likely to have it with you. But I have been using Kepharts this year pretty much exclusively in the woods.
 
After each use\excursion strop it. Fallkniven "s Lam CoS steel strops up like a laser.
After that you can do a.few.passes on the flats as well to remove excess crud and.slowly the scratches will wear down and it will polish up. However, as was said previously, usage scars add character to your blade and memories as well. Good luck and enjoy your Fallkniven!!

James
 
I like to use a green scotch brite pad to clean my user knives. Gets the gunk off and blends the scratches with more finer scratches.

Not for everyone but I’m not that picky about the appearance of my users. I also have used stones on the sides of some blades to flatten them.
 
You guys have been amazingly helpful! What a great community! So I scrubbed hard and got most of the sap off with just WD40. I ordered some Flitz off Amazon. That stuff seems hand no matter what. The scratches I'm most concerned about are towards the blade seen in the first pic. Are those from sharpening? As far as POLISHING STONES go, don't you use those on the blade itself to remove micro scratches like this? Am I doing something wrong? I admit there is a lot I don't understand when it comes to the fine tuning of knives. If you have a collection of stones you'd use the more abrasive lower grit number to sharpen until you hit high grit stones like 1000 grit to polish the entire knife including the edge? Is Flitz abrasive to some degree allowing the polishing of knives?

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Here is just a second image of the knife
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