Storing Knives

[DylanK]

Im not sure if this has been covered or not, but how are you ment to store carbon steel knives? I was thinking of oiling the leather sheath up real good on the inside, then oiling the blade and storing in the sheath? May be? May be not?

So how do you go about it?

Dylan

[M.Hogan]

With my forged knives I oil them (I've known people to even use cooking oil) then I wrap them it a cloth that is a bit moist with oil in the middle...I don't like storing oiled blades in their leather shealth.]]
But any way thats what I do...

[gundy]

I simply oil them with 'rust free' or similar product and when in storage, store out of the sheath!

[jindydiver]

Unless your sheath is vegetable tanned you shouldn't store your knife in it. The standard chromium tan for leather will rust a carbon knife pretty quickly in humid weather.

[DylanK]

Well that seems simple enough. Is that black epoxy stuff that some knives are coated with available to us? Seems like that would help a fair bit. Oh and another question has come to mind; where do you store your knives? Im guessing in a plastic box of somesort?

Dylan

[Steven J]

I store all of my knives in their sheaths - Always. The sheath is for protecting the knife and the user. Most of my sheaths are heavily waxed or oiled and as this rubs of on the blade helps to prevent some corrosion, although on its own it protects only in patches. I generally wipe the blade over with a furniture wax if I know that it will get use in the next foreseeable future. If I plan to leave it longer, I wipe it down with Lanotec - a lanoline based grease suitable for use in food processing machinery. This is really sticky stuff.

Steve