I would like to ask a few questions for clarification.
When you folks say you use your folders for food prep, is that just fancy speak for "we had brick of cheese and a sausage at work, so I cut it up with my pocket knife"?
Or do you mean you enter your kitchen and process everything for a full on family meal with your pocket knife....which makes me ask, have you ever tried a proper kitchen knife? We all love our pocket knives, and perhaps some of the zealots among us have prepared a full meal this way ONCE, but are some of you claiming to do this frequently !?!
Further, when you say you wash it off in water after, (and perhaps before?) food prep, do you mean, "I clean the blade in soapy water, taking care to not get soapy water (like Dawn, that is know for its ability to "take grease out of your way") into the pivot, because I also took care to not get food in the pivot", or do you mean, "I dunk and scrub the sucker in soapy water and celan everything because I also got food all up in the pivot and slabs (and in the process, I potentially remove my oil/grease from the pivot)"
To each their own...I can see processing small game in the woods and making a mess of things...because that happens....but how often really? And while that is processing food, its pretty far down the list of processes prior to eating...so I'd really call it processing an animal, and not food....but that is semantics perhaps, but I ask anyway because it seems like some concepts are getting confused with others....regardless, the lube used in the pivot of a knife during game processing is pretty immaterial to health and safety considering you will be cleaning the meat after you introduce any contaminants (such as the toxic lead pullet/shot you may have used to down the animal?).
The point I am headed toward making is: CRK and others makes some nice kitchen knives that are actually designed to prepare foor in the kitchen, and clean up easily without concerns of lube, or pivot damage...AND these knives cost less than the folders....AND they work a lot better for this type of cutting because they have geometry and ergonomics optimized ENTIRELY for these tasks (rather than a pile of compromises to the ergos to make the knife HIGHLY versatile for every other task that most people do...including folding).
If you are processing game (fish, squirrels, deer, whatever) then yeah, you might make a mess, and perhaps want to clean the blood out of the pivot if you think some entered because blood often interacts with metals a little more than water, and it can carry pathogens of all sorts. BUT once again, if you are doing this VERY often, you would may be enjoy a better suited product for the task (such as one of the CRK fixed blades). Once again, easier and less work to clean up, better ergos, yadda yadda yadda. Sure, I might choose to use my Sebenza for the handful of times I process a small animal in a year, but if I am doing it with any regularity, or if my boys catch a LOT of fish and we are going to fillet them....No, my intelligence level dictates that I use a better suited tool for the job.
A Sebenza is a great knife for a lot of tasks, but lets not let our zeal for this knife blind us to common sense.
Or not, it is your knife and your life...it just seems like silliness to deny yourself the pleasures of specialized knives that make your life easier. My Sebenza is not that much of a jealous witch!
