Osage is the new Black, er...Bog Oak...

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Nice score on that Esquire!

 

Oh Serg!

 

Tek & Sergio
yall have the best knives

 

Handyman - my first snag on a Fiddleback Friday a week ago.

 

Heck of a first! Congrats! What's the steel thickness on it?

 

Thanks, I'm very happy with it. It's 3/32 A2, SFT.

 

Perfection!

 

Agree

 

Excellent job on the first snag. Beautiful blade.

 

Thanks.

So, I found Thoughts on different woods for handle scales where Andy explains how he finishes scales. I understand osage will darken over time, especially with UV exposure, and there's really no getting around that, but is there a recommended regimen for maintaining osage handles, anything folks have found that works better at preserving the wood and its beauty?

 

I think the consensus you'll get from this group is that they love how Osage ages - to the point that they'd let em soak up UV rays 24x7 if they could. Being of the order of Bog Oak bellied Sneetches I'll often kid around with the Osage bellied Sneetches that Osage will darken to become Bog Oak in 5,000 years or so.

Anyway, not sure if you're asking about general preservation or if you're asking about slowing the Osage darkening process. This has always been a good source for general maintenance if you haven't found this one. It took me a while because maintenance is slightly misspelled in the title and I couldn't find my bookmark.
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...-optimization-and-improvement-thread.1254062/

Hope that helps.

 

i had to knock the dust off this one & clip it to my front pocket tonight

 

Damn Phillip!

Robbie, I agree with what Warrior said. Most of us love how osage ages with time. Look through the threads and you'll see many pics that provide good examples. I have no idea how to prevent this, but I use Howard's Feed and Wax on my wood scales. You can get it at Lowe's.

 

Warrior, thanks for the link to that maintenance post! There's a lot of great information there and in other posts it links to. That is a fantastic resource.

Phillip, that's beautiful!

Luca, yeah, I'm not going to even attempt to fight the color change. I just wondered about general preventative maintenance of wood and if there was anything unique to osage. I think I only have one other knife with wooden scales (walnut). I've used a beeswax & orange oil product on that one, but it's not nearly as nice as my Fiddleback. I thought I'd try to start off right with it from the very beginning.

 

thanks,

the Howards Feed-N-Wax we use is beeswax & orange oil

 

Check out this little Osage gem I got at Bladeshow from the esteemed Carl Rechsteiner @crex

 

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I was able to handle that one at Carl's table, Andy. Outstanding blade! It really made me appreciate his work that much more.