How to take care of your Brusletto knife
When you have taken that step and purchased a quality knife from Brusletto, you have a knife that will last for many years. To keep the knife looking good we recommend that you clean it after use in clean or perhaps slightly soapy water and dry it well before putting it back in its sheath.
The handles will not under normal usage need any further care for quite some time as it is well oiled before leaving the factory. And by normal usage we mean by Nordic standards – anywhere from -30C to + 35C! We feel that that will cover Kiwi conditions as well. However, if you wish, any good furniture oil can be used. The sheath may benefit from a waterproofing agent from time to time, about as often as those boots of yours.
There are basically four things that affect how well your knife will retain its sharpness, namely:
1. The quality of the steel
2. The hardness
3. The shape of the edge
4. How the knife is used.
Brusletto’s knife blades are made of Swedish Sandvik 12C27 stainless steel, which is hardened in our ovens to between 56 and 58 Rockwell. Some blades are hollow ground, others convex ground and yet others have the usual flat ground finish. That covers the first three points listed above.
Now that ever important fourth point. In use, there are two processes in particular that dull the edge of any knife blade. One is heavy loading, which breaks of small pieces of the edge and leaves it saw-toothed. The other is edge rolling, which is the result of normal usage. This can generally be corrected with some strokes against a quality knife (sharpening) steel, something you often see the butcher do.
After prolonged use however any knife will become blunt. The solution here is whetting or grinding, but we must distinguish between the two. When normal prolonged usage has blunted the knife, it generally means that the tapered shape (hollow, flat or convex ground) it received during manufacture has been lost. Whetting the blade can often restore this. If the blade has been subjected to heavy wear, the larger notches in the blade may require grinding to correct.
When a knife is to be whetted, we recommend that you hold the whetstone still and pas the knife blade over it as if you wanted to cut thin strips from the stone. Continue doing this, or even moving the blade in small circles until it is sufficiently sharp. Of course this requires a whetstone of quality.
We believe that the best way to grind a Brusletto knife is on a proper rotating grindstone. Here it is important that the temperature does not become too high as it will ruin the hardness of the steel. There has always been discussion about whether one should grind with or against the grindstone. Whichever way you choose, we believe that it is important that the edge is straight, not curved and that you must grind both sides of the blade at the same angle, in relation to the grindstone. Once the blade is in shape again, it should be whetted as above.
To polish a sharpened blade even further, you can draw the blade across a leather strop. This should always be done with the edge, as opposed to against the edge which only results in your strop getting reduced to small pieces.
When using a steel, you must hold the blade at the same angle as when grinding. We recommend d that you hold the steel still and pass the knife blade against it by drawing the knife steadily in a curved movement from handle to blade tip. Change sides with each pass, start with light pressure and finish carefully. It is not the speed you use but the precision which gives you the result you want.
Look after your Brusletto knife and it will last for generations. We know, we have been making knives for generations.