Storing natural material handles

[Swingshott]

While most of my knives are in the 'Tacticool' category, i have a few with handles made of bone / horn.

Thankfully, i live in a temperate climate. But can anyone give me some advice on how best to store / preserve them so as to avoid shrinkage / discoloration?

Thanks

 

[Bill DeShivs]

Keep as much oil off of the handles as you can. Wax them with paste wax/neutral shoe polish occasionally.
Dermestids will eat horn, so knives should be inspected at regular intervals.
Bone is stable, but horn will shrink/warp. Again wax and keep the items in a temperature-controlled environment.

 

[Bill3152]

Horn can warp something fierce. I stored some straight razor blanks years ago. Store them flat with a brick on top is what I would do. Bone I.never had issues with

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

I have a couple of Buck folders handled in stag. The covers were just glued on, and not pinned. No issues at all, where I originally bought them and lived for many years in central Texas - the relative humidity was fairly high most of the time there, at 40-60% or higher. After 20 years there, I moved back to my native New Mexico, where the climate is a lot drier and relative humidity at/below 20% most of the time, and sometimes down to single digits. Hadn't been here long, before I pulled them out of storage one day and realized the covers on both knives had warped pretty severely, leaving big gaps under the ends of the covers. One of them was bad enough, the warpage had separated the glue from the handle, and the covers actually came off.

So, moral of the story is, watch out for prolonged and severe changes in humidity, with natural handle materials like wood or stag, at least. I don't have any in horn, so I can't speak for that - but I take others' word for truth on that. I've never had any issues with bone, at all, no matter where I've lived.