Calling all knife aficionados.......

Can someone here please explain to me about cleaning vintage knives. I don't want to do anything to hurt value. I can see where over cleaning or polishing could be bad, but what about actual cleaning? On eBay I see some knives that just look dirty on the handles, or there is black gunk on the tangs making it difficult to see the tang stamps, or grime in the joints causing the blades to be lazy, or on Buck 110 knives, the brass bolsters are tarnished or green. What is the proper thing to do to these knives?
Larry

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Miss Buddies crsides & fat tom

Your knives... do what you want with them.

If crud and corruption offends you, clean 'em up, but you don't want to shine them up like a diamond. Just use appropriate cleaning/conditioning products and the right tools, such as toothbrush, wooden toothpicks, soft cloths and maybe some bronze wool... whatever would be best for scales/handles and steel, etc.

Allow them to keep their character.

WD 40 is safe and effective. I use it in my shop for cleaning old knives. You can use detergent , hot water, and a brush. But, if you do-spray liberally afterwards with WD 40 to displace all the moisture. 0000 steel wool is good on the steel parts.

As above, soap and water is fine for basic crud removal with 0000 steel wool. I use alot of qtips for internal spaces. For blades and bolsters, i do use simichrome or Flitz for cleaning, light polishing, speck removal. My goal is not a new knife, but a clean well used look.

Ballistol and Simichrome work very well.

If you sre dealing with collector grade knives, less is more. Do NOT use aggressive cleaners or polishers. Removing the dirt is good
The generally accepted method for metal parts is white 3M pads and Renaissance or equivalent wax. Remove loose rust with a wooden scraper. Solvents like ballistol or WD40 are OK on metal. Keep them away from wood, horn, bone or anything organic.
But it is your knife, and if it is a user, do what you want

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Kind regards, Heinz

There are a lot of lazy sellers on ebay. At gun shows too…
They buy items at estate or garage sales and offer them for sale, without putting any effort in to cleaning them up.

I use a soft cloth and Flitz or Mothers Mag Polish on the blades, bolsters, shields and the spring. I use Q-Tips to clean between the liners. A little Hoppe’s works great on most handle materials, but I wouldn’t use it on celluloid, ivory or MOP scales. I like to add a coat of Ren wax to the metal when I’m done.

I picked up this Hubertus leverlock auto for $70 because of the condition, but all it needed was a little TLC. The bolsters and lever were dingy and the the blade was a mess. It looked like bubba tried to use a carbide “V” sharpener. The edge was jagged and had several nasty chips. I wish I had before pictures.

I polished the bolsters and lever with Mothers and used a little Hoppe’s and a tooth brush on the stag. I carefully worked the edge down with a diamond lap and finished it up with a fine stone. I went real easy polishing the logo side of the blade, because I didn’t want to risk losing the etch. Sometimes less is more. If I didn’t tell you what I did, you’d never know. IMO, it’s now worth over 3X what I paid.

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"I also cook."

Like Heinz say, less is more especially with Collector Blades.
And easy does it recommended for most others.
Here’s my Grandfather’s Knife.
The black blade he only used to cut a chaw.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

Advise from a vintage knife collector for 40 plus years with hundreds, literally, of antique knives in my collection or has have passed through my hands. I have ruined many a fine collector knife in my youth by overzealous polishing. The consensus of devout collector is, clean, but never ever polish. I clean most knives with WD-40 and steel wool, then remove all rust as it is a cancer, then lightly steel wool the blades. I just worked on a Buck 112 with such green verdigris. Nasty knife that had spent too many years in the leather case. So many fish guts in the works the blade would not lock. At this point aggressive cleaning was necessary to get it back into working condition. It is a good thing it was not a valuable antique. I also was able to snag a 4-line Camillus cattle knife with cut swedges, long pull, and the most unusual blue translucent sparkle scales. I have never seen such scale and the only way I can describe it, imagine a goldstone handle only blue. A light cleaning and oiling and it is now in perfect un-polished condition, sleeping with my other antique cattle knives.