best treatment for antler handle
- Thread starter paolo
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I got told a tip once from a man who knows.
The natural(consentrated) oil on the side of your nose is about the best thing there is for protecting natural things like wood,bone antler and ivory.
Ever since I was given this piece of advice I have rubbed my knife handles on the side of my nose to get the oil on then rubbed for a few mins with the tips of my fingers.
Apperently this is where the expession hand rubbed finish comes from
The natural(consentrated) oil on the side of your nose is about the best thing there is for protecting natural things like wood,bone antler and ivory.
Ever since I was given this piece of advice I have rubbed my knife handles on the side of my nose to get the oil on then rubbed for a few mins with the tips of my fingers.
Apperently this is where the expession hand rubbed finish comes from
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Not only will patchy shaved arms be the tell of a bushcrafter, now it will be scarred and sliced noses
Thanks a lot, I should have searched better
cheers,
Paolo
Took me a while to find and I knew what I was looking for. The search function isn't that great since the big change.
You know you didn't need to use the main search function for it Jonathan. All you needed to do was to go to your profile and click on find all started threads to look through them for the one you were after.
Should have taken you all of 2 minutes to cheack all 174 of them
You know you didn't need to use the main search function for it Jonathan. All you needed to do was to go to your profile and click on find all started threads to look through them for the one you were after.
Should have taken you all of 2 minutes to cheack all 174 of them
I thought that it was posted by someone else to be honest, and I replied within their topic. As I post a hideous amount of crap, that could have taken a fair while.
If you want it to stay white sand it to 1200 grit or there abouts and polsih it with a polishing wheel if you have and thats it. The polishing wheel is a nice to have and not necessary is any other kind of finish othe that regular use as salad said the oil off you hands is good enough.
That won't prevent warping from temperature differentials or damp though. Soaking in oil does that and stabilises to a great extent. I know someone who soaked theirs in hot Ren wax for 6 hours to keep it white, but no idea how it worked out.
Well, I haven't said in the first post that the handle is well polished now, but, since I'm using it quite a lot, I was thinking about a way to protect it, mostly from damp and from the dirt that my hands can put in the micro pores in the handle.
Probably the Danish oil treatment will be my choice, because I'm quite "sensitive" about that knife and I don't want to stain the handle.
Cheers
Paolo
Paolo, with reindeer being so dense you won't get much discoloration and the Danish oil will most likely soak into the inner core more than the outer. You can see that the dense part of the antler in my knife (sambar) near the ricasso didn't absorb any oil at all due to the density. Reindeer is far more dense than sambar, so I'd soak it for a longer time because of this. I use mine all the time and it really does help protect it and is far more stable. I wouldn't have dreamed about immersing it in water for prolonged periods before, it wouldn't bother me at all to do so now.
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Most scndinavien knifemakers say that antler should not be oiled as it will stain yellow.
The antler does not stain easily and you can get a bleach cleaner for antler I will post a link when I get around to it as I am at work but my home PC is also faulty.
True, it does appear that way. Although I'd describe it as more of a deep translucency...
This is the knife before treatment:
and after:
Agood example of your own naturaloils working would be my grans old cutlery dinning set. The handles had ivory inlays. The carving fork which did not get used much had tiny cracks it the ivory work, however the knives and forks were in much better condition due to regular use.
The oil in your hands will work, however french polishers long ago used to use the shiny oil that is on the side of your nose by rubbing there fingers on it as this is the part of your body where your natural oil is most consentrated.
Tis why I do it also
As always, when you ask something in this forum you don't have only an answer but a ton of useful hints.
Thank you all, I will also have something to experiment as soon as I will have time to order some stuff from Brisa.
:You_Rock_
Paolo
Thank you all, I will also have something to experiment as soon as I will have time to order some stuff from Brisa.
:You_Rock_
Paolo
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