In search of pure Indian sandalwood oil that is reasonable

[kai]

I'm with YS: Start with good quality sandalwood essential oil and some drops get you a long way.

Note that most commercial sandalwood oils are already heavily diluted with any kind of base oil with just bits of pure sandalwood essential oil or even artificial sandalwood essential oil added. Actually, artificial may nowadays be good enough for our purposes. If you're fine eating artificial flavors (and I know of only very, very few people who are really consequently avoiding any artificial flavors!), one might well argue that this might be legit, too...

Because the oil used for diluting sandalwood essential oil may vary widely (from local palm oil to mineral oils) including different qualities resulting in differences of stability possibly affecting storage (natural oils will get rancid and release acids which will affect steel as well as get sticky), I'm opting for a high quality paraffin/mineral oil (sewing machine oils from known companies are a good bet) plus a bit of pure sandalwood essential oil (a trustworthy supplier with sustainable use policy is more important than geographic origin); adding a bit of traditional kenanga essential oil gives additional odour (not widely available though: nice to have - not mandatory).

Keris blades can get pre-treated with water-displacing oils like WD40 (especially during drying steps) and "cleaning" oils (gun oils, etc.). Once fully done and after patting off any excess oil, adding a bit of the "perfume" oil mix and wrapping the blades in plastic foil goes a long way.

Regards,
Kai