New Central African knife, cleaning/maintenance advice?
 

Just added this Central African (Ngombe?) knife to my collection. Large, flat blade with faint marks. Wood hilt mostly covered with metallic wrap. Would like to know the best way to clean the blade and hilt, and to preserve the wood, without destroying the patina? I want to be careful to avoid over cleaning. I could wipe the metal down with Ballistol but I’m unsure how to proceed with the wood.

Overall length 58 cm
Blade length 47 cm
Blade width 8.5 cm

often depends what the origine of the "dirty" condition is; simple dirt or deterioration of the wood by externl causes or poor storage...?

This one of mine was pretty bad and first I used some oil to soak off some stuff :
put if on metal and wood. Depending on the condition for a couple of hours or a day.
Softly clean it with a cotton cloth. as it was still not clean, I used the finest steelwool.

Hereby the result before and after :

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...7&postcount=37
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...0&postcount=40
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...1&postcount=41


But it's always in the eye of the beholder how far you want to go, but certainly some oil first would be of great help to see what needs to be done more or not.
certainly form a conservation point of view for your very nice knife

Hello WW,

Your nice knife could be Luba also, but I am unsure. Treating the blade with Ballistol oil and rubbing it with 000 steel wool is a good idea, others would clean it until the metal is visible again but I wouldn't do it personally.
The wood I would clean and treat with linseed oil in the same way, Gunar has shown it is a good way to go.

Regards,
Detlef