Prefered Wood Finish For Wood Scales?

Based on the abundance of good advice I bought some Watco Danish oil. I will try this on a few knives to see how I like it. I'm going to select one olive wood, one curly birch and one walnut handled knives to see how they turn out. Do you recommend using high grit abrasive paper to apply the Danish oil or between applications to rough up the finish?
 
If anyone checks in on this thread, I have experience with this. I live in an environment with wide variance in RH. We go about 80-85% average RH in Summer to about 30% in Winter. Usually this means that untreated wood handles contract and don’t return fully in the Summer (although a few have). What you need to do in this environment is inhibit the exchange of moisture from your wood handles. I’ve tried a bunch of things and I’ve settled on using Real Milk Paint’s 50/50 mix and finishing with their wood wax. This is basically starting with a tung oil/citrus (or pine) oil treatment which takes about a month, then finishing with a carnuba wax treatment that takes about two weeks. So, it’s not fast but for the last two years it has completely prevented shrinkage on my wood handled knives. I use Real Milk Paint because it’s easy and it seems like good quality. You could probably use any diluted tung oil and carnuba wax from your local hardware store.
 
FIUman said:
Based on the abundance of good advice I bought some Watco Danish oil. I will try this on a few knives to see how I like it. I'm going to select one olive wood, one curly birch and one walnut handled knives to see how they turn out. Do you recommend using high grit abrasive paper to apply the Danish oil or between applications to rough up the finish?
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How is your experiment going ???
 
My preference is to give the wood as much BLO as it will accept, allow to dry, then finish with a coconut oil/beeswax blend gently heated into the handle and polished out with a rag.

The wax holds up to the elements better and is much easier to re-apply... but IF you do BLO properly (which takes over a week of thin applications dried properly between and a final coat baked in and polymerized by the sun) that should work quite well too.

Basically the BLO is a shellack at that point, sadly most people don't have the patience.
 
SwissHeritageCo said:
My preference is to give the wood as much BLO as it will accept, allow to dry, then finish with a coconut oil/beeswax blend gently heated into the handle and polished out with a rag.

The wax holds up to the elements better and is much easier to re-apply... but IF you do BLO properly (which takes over a week of thin applications dried properly between and a final coat baked in and polymerized by the sun) that should work quite well too.

Basically the BLO is a shellack at that point, sadly most people don't have the patience.
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I also think going slow is better with wood. I use heat too. It helps the intake of the oil and the 1st coat of wax. I’ve used an oven on 200 and my radiators. Both were fine.

Current project: 15 year old untreated hickory handle. One more week on the wax then I’m done.

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There is some really excellent advice being posted here. My extrapolation from the this advice is that there is not one single correct method as long as the end goal is reached of sealing the wood from moisture intrusion. In my case my house is both air conditioned and we use dehumidifiers to suppress relative humidity below 50% humidity. As soon as I walk outside in the Florida environment the humidity is almost always between 70%-100% much of the year. I have actually seen a rifle stock split due to warpage under these conditions.

As to the great advice. I have yet to find the time to work on these handles but I'm thinking about trying a little bit of all the posted advice to determine which works best for me.
 
FIUman said:
Based on the abundance of good advice I bought some Watco Danish oil. I will try this on a few knives to see how I like it. I'm going to select one olive wood, one curly birch and one walnut handled knives to see how they turn out. Do you recommend using high grit abrasive paper to apply the Danish oil or between applications to rough up the finish?
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I use lint free rags.
My dad use to use fine steel wool? Gently on later coats...

Honestly what I do, since we are only making knives...I rub it on with a rag let it soak in. Dry. Then I keep rubbing it on my hands and jeans. I buff it out, add more danish oil. Let it dry, then rub and hand buff more, and more. Hand rubbed finish.

Maybe 3-6 coats. It will fill in very tiny scratches.

*I make User knives. So yes I want them to look good, but I don't go crazy on finishing like Art knives would get.
 
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