Saka (?), Kusu (?) knife for pleasure and maybe comments

[Martin Lubojacky]

Thanks for comments.
As far as soot is concerned, in North Cameroon I had possibility to visit enclosured "village residency" consisting of several "small houses". One of them was "kitchen" with fireplace. Various items including some made of iron were put in roof, all of them naturally covered with encrustment of soot.

Concerning cleaning of wooden items and hilts: I think that in the case of the West African original artefacts, I mean in those cases, which are, except of the riginal patina originated by using, also dirty because of the long storage and manipulation (residues of nymphs, rodential excrements, mud and a lot of dust - and also soot), the best way is to shower the wooden item by strong spout of tepid water - for short, than to dry it with clean and soft big rab - and eventually to finish (carefully) with hair drier, When it is totaly dry, you can "rediscover" the patina, which is still there, by simple rubbing with hands or soft cloth (if there is still problem, you can "rapair" patina with beeswax). The result (optical at least), used to be good.
Regards,
Martin

[Pieje]

Hi, nice one, it's a good old one, first half 20th C for sure.
I should clean it, at least the active rust.
I have a similar knife, but as mentioned before, this type of knife is not common, even in Belgium.