Knife maintenance question...

aproy1101 said:
Alrighty. You guys are probably right. I've just always heard to use olive oil to protect blades when camping. Good to know about Ballistol being food safe. It sure does have a strong odor to it though. Safe or no. I'm not wanting to taste it on my food.
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I use food quality mineral oil...
 
I have a hard time keeping my carbon blades from rusting when I go on canoe trips, no matter what I do. Sure, I can wipe them down and get the rust off once we stop. However, that has become a royal pain. Frankly, I have found that I don't NEED much knife on the water. I keep all "smallish" blades of 15" or under wiped down with mineral oil in a zip-lock bag and stashed in/on the pack. For my carry knife, I just go with a SE folder like the SAK Trekker or Spyderco Rescue 93. Plenty of knife to cut me/my pack loose if trouble comes up. Actually, I torture tested a Spyderco Tasman Salt in Florida this past week. There wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't in the water or exposed to the sea spray. The Tasman handled it all very well. Heck, I even had the dang thing clipped to my trunks when we played around in the ocean for hours on end. Great wet wear knife:thumbup:
Anyway, if I think I might need to hack my way through some bigger stuff on a canoe trip, then I keep a heavily greased down WWII lashed to the pack. It keeps it at the ready for work, but the globs of grease don't bother me as I seriously doubt that I'll have to use an 18" WWII to cut up some veggies;)
At any rate, it sure sounds like you've got a fun trip coming up. Enjoy it!:)

Jake
 
I use Mineral oil mixed with clove oil. I think my mixture was 32 oz of mineral oil to 1 oz of clove oil. The clove oil mixes well with the mineral oil and seems to help it stick better. It smells great also and is completely food safe, IIRC clove oil actually has certain healthful properties, though that was not why I added it. I had heard that it was used for Japanese swords in days gone by and I thought it might be interesting to try added to my mineral oil.
I have a small capped squeeze bottle in a ziploc baggie with a soaked wipe cloth in another baggie. Both of these go in a slightly larger baggie plus a small piece of scotchbright for sap removal before resheathing, and that is my travel carbon steel blade maintenance kit.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned one of those silicone impregnated gun rags. I have several of them and use them to wipe down guns and knives after use or handling them.

_However_ I have no idea how food safe or not they are, and Chris specifically mentioned using his knives for food prep.

I just like the rags because they are compact and handy and easy to use, and stay dry inside their plastic bags.

Norm
 
What always has worked for me is to use the knife at home for cutting citrus fruit and potatoes. After doing this for awhile, the carbon steel will take on a sort of blueing. Once you get that going, it won't rust.
Disclaimer: If you really try, you could probably create rust on a citrus blued blade. but you would have to really try hard.
 
I do the same; encourage the natural bluing process so I have less to worry about.




munk
 
Have you considered picking up a scuba divers knife for real wet trips?

They will rust eventually, but probably not on a week trip. These days the dive knives have gotten pretty sophisticated and there are a variety of synthetic sheaths available.

Then your big knife/s could be kept in a waterproof container for camp work.
 
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