I really hate brass sometimes.

Where brass shines for me (or actually, doesn't shine!) is on the guard and pommel of a traditional fixed blade knife. I really like the way it looks after it has tarnished on a knife like that. And, having grown up playing the saxophone, I too have good associations with the funky smell of brass! Here's my Buck Vanguard, with nice tarnished brass:

 
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The brass on all my other old fixed blades, just looks dull, but I don't know what it is about the Frosts Lapplander knives I have, I noticed it as soon as I got them, within a couple of days of being cleaned, they go a heavy brown, almost like they've rusted, and the deposit can become quite heavy. I'm not too bothered about the brass guards on my other fixed blades, but I have to clean these virtually every time I carry them.

I was a wine lecturer in a former life, and my strong sense of smell can sometimes be a curse! :D
 
I go through stages when I want the brass bolsters on my Buck 110s and 112s polished so they gleam like gold — and then there are periods where I'm happy with the usual tarnish, lightened and patinated by routine pocket wear. Just a whim, I guess.

For brass liners on other folders, I don't do anything because pocket wear keeps bright the thin brass edge exposed under the scales. But then all my scales are either plastic of some kind (delrin mostly) or real wood. No stag, no bone, so I'm (happily) missing whatever is going on chemically between these which others have noted.

I do have a fixed blade that I store in its sheath — yeah, I know it's bad to do this — and the brass hilt obviously contacts the sheath because it develops verdigris over a short time (couple weeks).
 
AreBeeBee said:
I do have a fixed blade that I store in its sheath — yeah, I know it's bad to do this — and the brass hilt obviously contacts the sheath because it develops verdigris over a short time (couple weeks).
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I do this too, with something lining the sheath to keep the blade off the leather. The guard will develop a thick green coating where it contacts the leather.
 
I stored my 110 some time too long in a my toolbox ... It had that green stuff on it that smelled very "unique". I asked a gunsmith as I thought he might know how to handle and take care of brass. He told me, use an old toothbrush and toothpaste to remove it.

I went home and it acutally worked great.

Just for some mainentance ;)
 
I normally do NOT like brass on knives, but since both my high school and college colors were black & gold, I like the look on these Craftsman stockmen in black sawcut delrin with brass bolsters and shields. I believe these were made by Schrade USA in the late '70s.

CraftsmenClosed_zps2a780fe9.jpg~original
 
Sonnemann said:
Yep...my stag Conductor that has been in my pocket for years now has the dreaded green around the pins. As an actual user of these knives I will usually advocate steel or NS pins/liners whenever I can for this very reason.
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Your 33 is one of my favs on the Forum here btw, it's always been fun to see it age since it's your EDC.
 
I have sometimes wondered why knives use brass instead of bronze. Bronze is stronger and IMHO has a warmer, richer color, plus it makes excellent bearings and thus should make good liners for traditionals.

The tendency of copper brass, and bronze to turn green has a lot to do with the body chemistry of the person handling it. I wore a solid bronze bracelet for over a decade and never saw even a spec of green on it. Just lucky I guess.
 
I didn't find verdigris to be a problem as I only encountered it in tiny amounts on my hunting knives after a season to season of storage.

I found hunting/camping knives I likes more, and carried them to the field for several years without touching the old favorites. One day I decided to pull out the old knives to take a look and they were covered with so much it looked like they were molding. The brass in the rivets on the sheaths had so much on them they looked like green buttons, not rivets. The brass hilts had a lot on them as well as the brass butts (Shrade Golden Spike in particular for this reference).

The knives had a funk on them I couldn't get rid of, so no game processing. I cleaned and oiled them, but didn't get rid of the staining or the smell. I was talking to a knife and sheath maker at a gun show, and he told me to try toothpaste and toothbrush to get rid of it, and it worked pretty well. Then I spoke to a guy a while after that who gave me the instruction to remove light verdigris and the smell at the same time. It was the use of an acidic solution that he picked up from the guys that took care of his small fishing boat. Similar formulas can be found here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+I+remove+verdigris+from+brass&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Verdigris will always come back as it is the equivalent of rust on ferrous materials. Using that idea, I now use WD40 to coat metals for rust/oxidation prevention and it works like a champ. It is actually one of the very few things that WD40 is really for in use.

Robert
 
Thanks, Christian and everyone, for a series of great laughs this morning :D

Christian -- forgive me -- I don't know you personally but your posts give a sense of how much this kind of thing must bother you. Your attention to detail is one of the things I appreciate about your posts :thumbup:

Funny about that smell. One of my favorite knives is a Buck 112 I got for my 10th birthday (my first "grown up" knife). That brassy smell is an indelible "childhood" smell for me. I associate it with being outdoors, exploring, camping...

Here's my 112. Thanks again for a great read this morning, everyone :)
 
midnight flyer said:
... I now use WD40 to coat metals for rust/oxidation prevention and it works like a champ. It is actually one of the very few things that WD40 is really for in use.
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I'm going to try a thin coat of WD-40 with that sheath knife I mentioned. We'll see if it stops the verdigris.

Thanks for the tip!
 
Interesting Thread Christian :thumbup:

Verdigris has never really bothered me because its so easy to remove - sometimes a simple wipe with a cloth with Mineral oil on it.

I gotta admit though - I have never smelt Brass - mind you my sense of smell isnt all that great = obviously :o, I really like Brass when it's Patina'd off - it just looks great - when its all shiny and new it tends to look very cheap :thumbdn:
 
Sonnemann said:
Right, so do you think will NS eventually show verdigris like regular brass?
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Nickel silver, aka "white brass" will definitly show a verdigris just like yellow brass, sometimes takes
a bit longer to show it though.
Ken.
 
steel bolsters and liners all the way. I don't mind brass smell but I don't like the green either. The steel liners also gives you an excuse to get a Charlow :D
James.
 
I kind of feel the same way about brass. (mind you, I have quite a few knives with brass liners that I love, so it doesn't stop me from enjoying them)

The only thing worse in my mind would be copper. The new kabar copper bolstered knives are popular with some, but I can't imagine I would like handling them. It goes back to a sculpture class I took that involved hammering copper bowls. After handling the copper all day, I would be tasting it as if I'd licked a penny. :barf:

But to each his own. :)
 
kamagong said:
The green stuff is called verdigris. "Verdigrises" was my attempt at conjugation.
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I told an old knife and gun nut about verdigris once and he thought that I was trying to pull one over on him!

I haven't used or carried knives with brass on them enough to have verdigris form. I have or have had some knives that came with it on them though.
 
TucsonMik said:
...your posts give a sense of how much this kind of thing must bother you.
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Campbellclanman said:
Verdigris has never really bothered me because its so easy to remove - sometimes a simple wipe with a cloth with Mineral oil on it.
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It's not that I hate brass per se. I have no problems with the stuff on my puukkos or bone covered slipjoints. But brass, when used with certain materials like stag or ivory makes for a bad combination. I do not like verdant stag.

- Christian
 
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