- Joined
- Jan 26, 2002
- Messages
- 2,737
OK, long, tediously detailed and in three parts:
1) Comments on Bura 26 oz 20" sirupati PGA (Had to get it, cheapest way to own one by him, so I can brag that it was made by the Royal Kami, and seemed the most useful size after I got a 36 oz 25")
2) My prior experience with Murphy's "Multiuse" formula soap.
3) A succesful (so far! only one day) expriment with Murphy's "Original" formula soap on the 20" sirupati. The procedure described here may be closer to what many are doing than 2).
1) The knife: "Rust at tip" has been ground off, and it was only on convex bevel. Sharpening will fix that, and its pretty well sharpened already. Otherwise the khuk is pretty much flawless, and as I suspected, an ideal size for me to use. Handle is one of the browner pieces of saatisal, and has some of the gold, but it's mostly dispersed, not in dramtic streaks. Karda is the best I've seen, very dramatic grain and it's all sapwood, edge near handle very well ground back, (1st I've gotten like this, except for YCS kardas) and it is an amazingly graceful and well-proportioned miniature of the large blade. Chakma equally finely proportioned and also has dramatic grain and color, but here the grain all runs lenghtwise, not in V's or chevrons like on the karda. Very thin where it joins the blade, and a lot of rouge/wax with a little wood showing through. Bit of a burl right there, which is why the rest of the handle has such great grain and color. More on that later. I now understand why Uncle says "Karda and chakma like only Bura does them."
EDIT to 1): Forgot to mention that the actual edge of the otherwise absoultely perfect karda has a little curve to it, but the spine has much less. And the tang and/or the handle hole is very slightly mis-aligned. Pretty picky stuff, I know. On the edge, most, if not all will stone out, I think. Still the prettiest karda I have. And the scabbard by the village sarki is the best I've seen so far. Stunning bargain.
2) "Multiuse" formula: Up to now, I've only used the Murphy's "Multiuse" forumla, which is as thin or thinner than water, and comes with a sprayer top. It rapidly soaks into the wood, leaving a dry-looking surface. but some tung oil repairs that. You can scrub out dry flecks of rouge with a toothbrush or soft, fine wire brush if you keep scrubbing after it drys. This can pretty much remove all the rouge, but can enlarge the grain, making filling a tedious proposition--so far the lighter, gold colored handles with lots of sapwood are the worst in this regard. But you do get a very light, gold color. But it can be hard to fill without getting dull, dark grey fill. I've resanded things back to nearly bare wood a couple of additional times to try to minimize this. Wal's "eggshell" description is nearly applicable on some areas of a couple of handles. But this scrubbing could be could be good for the oily "other saatisal" so some tung oil might be able to soak in.
3) The experiment: After reading about Wal's experience with complete removal of rouge/wax by hoof-dressing, I though that I might have been doing something similar, but not so extreme with the "multiuse" formula. I thought I'd try instead to retain all the grain fill by wax/rouge already there, and if possible, extend it. I could always sand more, or even scrub it out later I didn't like the result. How to do this?? Maybe by heavy power buffing with the hope that the wax might soften and get spread around more. Lacking a power buffer, I tried something else. I applied a thin coat of the thick, "original" Murphy's soap (just like I would apply tung oil) and started sanding with used 220 grit paper or new 320 grit paper. As I expected, the rouge/wax came off, and clogged up the paper. But it wasn't long before the wood surface was present nearly everywhere, and with new paper I was producing dry sawdust. The thick Murphy's didn't soak in that deep. I repeated the thin layer of soap and the wood went translucent like with oil and I could see where I wanted to sand down more. Again, I intially plugged up the paper and removed a lot more rouge. But after the dry sawdust was coming off, and the paper got a little worn the wood started to develop a nice polish. As I had suspected the burl area on the chakma did have a little bit filled by the rouge/wax and I wanted to retain that if possible instead of exposing duller-looking Himalayan epoxy, or doing a big fill job. I went to 400 grit, and put on a pretty good polish and the lighter-looking areas of fill showed that only fairly fine grain was getting now filled. I then repeated the whole deal once more, now going from used 320 grit to romove the paper-clogging stuff, then going to to 600 grit, and even the back of the paper for a final polish. This entire procedure was pretty quick, since the wood was a little softened by the soap. Since I sanded enough to get totally dry sawdust, I think there's little soap left, except in the fill areas. Very nice fine fill of rouge accentuates the remaining grain. I put on a (single, so far) layer of tung oil and the karda and chakma already look really great. The khuk handle could maybe use one more cleaning with the soap, my hand got a little red applying the tung oil. All three are very well filled and smoother than many of my other handles that were well-scrubbed with the "multiuse" formula and now bear many coats of oil and have had several sandings back down to nearly bare wood. Only question seems to be whether the Murphy's in the filled cracks will cause some problems later, like suddenly gumming up, or losing the fill. I'll probably oil, then sand down to bare wood with fine grit again on the "experiment" a couple of times and let things dry out for one or two days before applying another coat of oil just to be safe. But things look pretty darn good so far.....And the red rouge/wax looks better in the grain than a sometimes cloudy oil fill I sometimes get. (maybe I should let dry longer than 1 day to avoid this cloudiness?)
1) Comments on Bura 26 oz 20" sirupati PGA (Had to get it, cheapest way to own one by him, so I can brag that it was made by the Royal Kami, and seemed the most useful size after I got a 36 oz 25")
2) My prior experience with Murphy's "Multiuse" formula soap.
3) A succesful (so far! only one day) expriment with Murphy's "Original" formula soap on the 20" sirupati. The procedure described here may be closer to what many are doing than 2).
1) The knife: "Rust at tip" has been ground off, and it was only on convex bevel. Sharpening will fix that, and its pretty well sharpened already. Otherwise the khuk is pretty much flawless, and as I suspected, an ideal size for me to use. Handle is one of the browner pieces of saatisal, and has some of the gold, but it's mostly dispersed, not in dramtic streaks. Karda is the best I've seen, very dramatic grain and it's all sapwood, edge near handle very well ground back, (1st I've gotten like this, except for YCS kardas) and it is an amazingly graceful and well-proportioned miniature of the large blade. Chakma equally finely proportioned and also has dramatic grain and color, but here the grain all runs lenghtwise, not in V's or chevrons like on the karda. Very thin where it joins the blade, and a lot of rouge/wax with a little wood showing through. Bit of a burl right there, which is why the rest of the handle has such great grain and color. More on that later. I now understand why Uncle says "Karda and chakma like only Bura does them."
EDIT to 1): Forgot to mention that the actual edge of the otherwise absoultely perfect karda has a little curve to it, but the spine has much less. And the tang and/or the handle hole is very slightly mis-aligned. Pretty picky stuff, I know. On the edge, most, if not all will stone out, I think. Still the prettiest karda I have. And the scabbard by the village sarki is the best I've seen so far. Stunning bargain.
2) "Multiuse" formula: Up to now, I've only used the Murphy's "Multiuse" forumla, which is as thin or thinner than water, and comes with a sprayer top. It rapidly soaks into the wood, leaving a dry-looking surface. but some tung oil repairs that. You can scrub out dry flecks of rouge with a toothbrush or soft, fine wire brush if you keep scrubbing after it drys. This can pretty much remove all the rouge, but can enlarge the grain, making filling a tedious proposition--so far the lighter, gold colored handles with lots of sapwood are the worst in this regard. But you do get a very light, gold color. But it can be hard to fill without getting dull, dark grey fill. I've resanded things back to nearly bare wood a couple of additional times to try to minimize this. Wal's "eggshell" description is nearly applicable on some areas of a couple of handles. But this scrubbing could be could be good for the oily "other saatisal" so some tung oil might be able to soak in.
3) The experiment: After reading about Wal's experience with complete removal of rouge/wax by hoof-dressing, I though that I might have been doing something similar, but not so extreme with the "multiuse" formula. I thought I'd try instead to retain all the grain fill by wax/rouge already there, and if possible, extend it. I could always sand more, or even scrub it out later I didn't like the result. How to do this?? Maybe by heavy power buffing with the hope that the wax might soften and get spread around more. Lacking a power buffer, I tried something else. I applied a thin coat of the thick, "original" Murphy's soap (just like I would apply tung oil) and started sanding with used 220 grit paper or new 320 grit paper. As I expected, the rouge/wax came off, and clogged up the paper. But it wasn't long before the wood surface was present nearly everywhere, and with new paper I was producing dry sawdust. The thick Murphy's didn't soak in that deep. I repeated the thin layer of soap and the wood went translucent like with oil and I could see where I wanted to sand down more. Again, I intially plugged up the paper and removed a lot more rouge. But after the dry sawdust was coming off, and the paper got a little worn the wood started to develop a nice polish. As I had suspected the burl area on the chakma did have a little bit filled by the rouge/wax and I wanted to retain that if possible instead of exposing duller-looking Himalayan epoxy, or doing a big fill job. I went to 400 grit, and put on a pretty good polish and the lighter-looking areas of fill showed that only fairly fine grain was getting now filled. I then repeated the whole deal once more, now going from used 320 grit to romove the paper-clogging stuff, then going to to 600 grit, and even the back of the paper for a final polish. This entire procedure was pretty quick, since the wood was a little softened by the soap. Since I sanded enough to get totally dry sawdust, I think there's little soap left, except in the fill areas. Very nice fine fill of rouge accentuates the remaining grain. I put on a (single, so far) layer of tung oil and the karda and chakma already look really great. The khuk handle could maybe use one more cleaning with the soap, my hand got a little red applying the tung oil. All three are very well filled and smoother than many of my other handles that were well-scrubbed with the "multiuse" formula and now bear many coats of oil and have had several sandings back down to nearly bare wood. Only question seems to be whether the Murphy's in the filled cracks will cause some problems later, like suddenly gumming up, or losing the fill. I'll probably oil, then sand down to bare wood with fine grit again on the "experiment" a couple of times and let things dry out for one or two days before applying another coat of oil just to be safe. But things look pretty darn good so far.....And the red rouge/wax looks better in the grain than a sometimes cloudy oil fill I sometimes get. (maybe I should let dry longer than 1 day to avoid this cloudiness?)
Wet sanding with the Murphy's concentrate never occurred to me, but the next one in will get it. 
) can be a learning tool.
