My latest tried and tested design, note the sealed wooden handle, for the DSC lovers, with no knowledge of hygiene.
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View attachment 51053
What and how many knifes when in the field!
- Thread starter speedystu
- Start date
looks horrible - what you need is a nice cheap 440c blade, that's nice and wide as big knives work better, and a plastic sheath
Nice looking knife - looks like very similar to the bird n' trout design.
I may be mistaken, but that handle looks suspiciously like stabilised wood (Beyond wood - Emberleaf Workshops). If so, I wonder if the hygienic properties of wood are not compromised in some way?
Where wood has an advantage over plastic is through the combination of its inherent antibacterial properties together with its porous nature resulting in the dessication of the bacteria. By stabilising the wood you would affect its ability to do this, through saturating the wood with plastic or resin. So what you end up with is effectively a plastic handle anyway.
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Raker Ltd
Active Member
You're right about it being Emberleaf, but the handle was Red/Black spalted poplar (fully stabilised). We saw this knife when Dean last visited the shop to drop off a few orders - stunning piece of kit.
There is open and closed cell stabilisation - which I understand to be dependant on the type of wood used.
The process is very interesting... the wood goes into a vacuum (where the air is sucked from the pores) then is coated in a special resin, when it is removed from the vacuum the porous wood sucks in the resin. So yes, very similar to a plastic handle, just nicer looking.
Closed cell stabilised wood is 100% resistant to moisture, dirt, etc - we stock their knives as they seem to be one of the few knife makers to still offer a lifetime guarantee
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Many thanks for the reply, and I have to say the Emberleaf knives look very nice, though I've not seen one in the flesh.
I have a real liking for stabilised wood, having suffered from wood degradation on knife handles in the past - in fact I have a couple of blocks of stabilised spalted birch where I'm just waiting for the right blade to turn up
Nice as it is, it does seem to remove some of the properties of wood that make it more hygenic than plastic, at least so far as I understand the process.
Taff
I don't think it's quite as simple as "plastic good/wood bad" or "wood good/plastic bad", as you also need to look at the type of wood used and how (if at all) it has been treated.
The research out there on wood vs plastic vs stainless steel makes for interesting reading, and people have come round to the fact that wood in general contains both antibacterial properties and the ability to absorb bacteria that make it far more hygienic than we were led to believe 10 or 15 years ago. In general it seems that bacterial survival rates on wood tend to be lower than on plastic or steel, particularly where the material surfaces are cut or marked. Bacteria on wood gets dessicated (i.e. all moisture is removed and the bacteria dies) as it soaks into the wood. Wood also contains anti-bacterial properties, though this varies depending on the type of wood used. However, quite a lot of the research is looking at wood "in the raw" so to speak. So the butchers blocks, chopping boards, etc you allude to are constantly exposing raw wood at the surface.
Wood-handled knives, on the other hand, are often treated in terms of stabilisation, varnishes, oils, etc. These treatments doubtless affect those inherent properties in the wood that we are keen to utilise. For example stabilisation effectively coats the wood in a resin and (in some cases) fills in all the pores and makes the wood impervious. In this scenario how can the wood absorb the bacteria, leading to dessication, or expose those anti-bacterial properties of the wood? The answer is it can't. Similarly with oil or varnish treatments, though perhaps not to the extent of a treatment like stabilisation. Linseed, for example, has been found to be little use in terms of hygiene protection, though it does make the wood look nice
So if I was going to design a knife handle that maximised the "hygienic" properties of wood I would probably think of taking some oak and doing nothing more than sanding it to as fine a finish as possible. But of course that wouldn't be very practical, so we are left trying to find a compromise (compromises seem to come up quite often in deer stalking!).
Then we have cleaning, which for plastic tends to be dishwasher, as opposed to hot soapy water for wood. Both seem effective, though even a dishwasher doesn't necessarily kill all known germs. Microwaving could be useful, though perhaps sticking a knife in the microwave isn't the smartest idea
Personally I use both plastic and wood handled knives, and don't think there is a great deal to choose between them, other than aesthetics. I would find it hard to mandate use of one over the other, and when compared to gralloching a deer in the field, carrying it back to the car, transporting it home and preparing it in the larder, I don't think worrying about the relative hygiene properties of plastic and wood handles should exercise us overly!
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rick6point5
Well-Known Member
Some excellent anti bacterial results using the latest technology in copper coated or impregnated materials, be it plastic or wood for that matter, one of the best hygiene breakthroughs to date, i wont bore you but, details are available on the www.
There's a lot out there on silver as well.
rick6point5
Well-Known Member
Very true sir. Natures very own solutions being replaced by mans attempts to mimic or better sometimes does not cut the mustard.
Mustard, coincidentally, is now thought to contain compounds that inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
Sometimes nature really does know best....
rick6point5
Well-Known Member
Excellent info WG will have a read up.
cheers
cheers
It seems to have gone a bit off course this thread but some cracking stuff on it all the same.
I try to keep the amount of kit I carry to a workable minimum, so it's a Mora button blade, an orange handled Mora or Bushblade and a small saw.
All dishwasher safe and/or can be scalded with a kettle of boiling water, whatever's available.
Has anyone thought of or tried freezing heavily soiled knives to break up the tissue, blood & fat residues on a knife or saw and to kill bacteria before a thorough clean?
I try to keep the amount of kit I carry to a workable minimum, so it's a Mora button blade, an orange handled Mora or Bushblade and a small saw.
All dishwasher safe and/or can be scalded with a kettle of boiling water, whatever's available.
Has anyone thought of or tried freezing heavily soiled knives to break up the tissue, blood & fat residues on a knife or saw and to kill bacteria before a thorough clean?
Jagare
Well-Known Member
I did a boar last night and the knife was covered in fat ,blood, snot and gibblets. I spray with kitchen cleaner to break up the fat and then wash with washing up liquid. 30 seconds and squeaky clean knife. simple
I only asked cos I used to do that in the hospital lab where I worked.
End of shift, no time to do a clean on the postmortem knives and we would bag them and put them in a -20C freezer.
The frozen matter would be more easily shifted next day, and when we tested it the bacterial load was lower - freezing kills a lot of pathogens.
I prefer to hose my knives, saws etc down at the end of a stalk/larder session of course.
Just wondered had anyone tried freezing deliberately or accidentally (leaving a knife out in the frost).
I must point out, what I did with the lab knives was some years ago, I seriously doubt it would be acceptable practice in a lab nowadays - and a lot of lab tools are disposable nowadays anyway.
End of shift, no time to do a clean on the postmortem knives and we would bag them and put them in a -20C freezer.
The frozen matter would be more easily shifted next day, and when we tested it the bacterial load was lower - freezing kills a lot of pathogens.
I prefer to hose my knives, saws etc down at the end of a stalk/larder session of course.
Just wondered had anyone tried freezing deliberately or accidentally (leaving a knife out in the frost).
I must point out, what I did with the lab knives was some years ago, I seriously doubt it would be acceptable practice in a lab nowadays - and a lot of lab tools are disposable nowadays anyway.
alphaburner
Well-Known Member
Fallkniven F1 and a EKA swede 10. Does nicely!
Kiwi hunter
Well-Known Member
What I used (back in NZ - and on reds) - a Svord Peasant knife. The high carbon steel blade keeps a great edge (and they're cheap too). I like the swing blade and it's easy to clean. One of the most popular back-up knives back in NZ are the little Mercator folders. Even the meat hunters / deer cullers used them. Haven't seen them on here - anyone use them?
Cheers
Hayden
Cheers
Hayden
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