Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Not technically truly part of Western Martial Arts, but frankly...the sword's not gonna work well and/or last long if you aren't taking care of it, sooo...why not?

What does everyone use to carry sword oil around? Doing an overnighter without oil for your blades can be done easily...you're headed home shortly anyway. But when you start spending three, four, seven, ten+ days in the wild, you're going to be needing to carefully look after your utility and combative blades carefully, so what do you carry it in?

In addition...do you carry something specifically as sword oil, or do you bring something that can double as cooking oil? Most mineral oil brands are packaged as a form of simple laxative, so they're obviously ingestible...but does anyone know if they make a decent cooking oil, so one could use it as such if necessary? I typically use last night's bacon drippings, but it couldn't hurt to have an alternative.

Thoughts?

I've used regular mineral oil for about twenty years. The laxative mineral oil is thick and sticks to the blades well. I use fleece (synthetic or real) to line my scabbards so the blades are constantly oiled every time you draw or sheath the blade.

I picked up a black powder oiler that I use to carry a small bit of oil around, primarily for axe head and knife blades.

I was literally JUST looking at one of those oilers on backwoodstin.com, where my boiler came from, and that's what inspired the thread. What's the "wand" all about?

Greg I use one the backwoods oilers on occasion and its a good buy. If not that I use a small glass bottle with a cork stopper. As for oil itself I carry lanolin oil. Its historical, a great rust inhibitor and fairly cheap. I also carry a small square of sheep skin with the fleece still on it to rub all my weapons down with.

The wand is to apply oil to small areas, screws, areas like the frizzen and up under the trigger.

I use a small, one-shot Patron liquor bottle, one of the small ones. I took the label off and filled it with mineral oil. It's kept nice and snug in my need wallet. I didn't purchase the bottle, a friend of mine did. I did taste it though, and in my opinion it was absolutely terrible, but I am thankful for the bottle.

I'm leery of glass bottles of any size--small ones you're liable to sit on and break, and large ones are sturdier at the expense of weight.
I wonder how something like walnut oil would work on blades? I've got in the habit of rubbing down wooden handles with an english walnut or two to keep them oiled, and if (like me) you carry some nuts in your food-bag, you'd already have your oil in a naturally self-contained form. Everything should do double-duty in rangering, I say.

Not sure how it would work for fine swords and such but taking a page from the mariner's industry fish and whale oil were used very often for coating iron and steel for tools and knives. Of course it is very easy to obtain in that envirement. How to carry it has always been a bit of a problem as horn and bone can, in time, sweat due to porosity. Wooden vessels are a bit better and more durable than fired clay or glass but the glass and clay are a bit less porous and should be easier to contain leakage. many later oil cans and contaners were made of metal such as tin or copper I am thinking that that might be the way a dwarf would go and would be more apt to be able to procure in His society. Find the tinker I need an oiler!

Never heard of rubbing a walnut on your sword, Udwin! Is that a period practice or something you came up with?

I've done a fair bit of Toyama-ryu Iaido. The Japanese use camellia oil, spiked with cloves. But it wasn't used unless the blade needed to be cleaned (fouled with orc blood etc.). If you keep it in its scabbard, it won't use up oil to a point where you need to replenish it.

Kortoso wrote:But it wasn't used unless the blade needed to be cleaned (fouled with orc blood etc.). If you keep it in its scabbard, it won't use up oil to a point where you need to replenish it.

That's a valid point for swords...my main issue is a large-ish seax that is used routinely for firewood processing and bushcraft...needs fresh oil just about daily.

Yes my seaxes being very utilitarian and of a lesser grade steel also need care quite often. Greg yours is of much finer quality but what you put it through is what is causing the frequency of care correct?
The cold steel seaxes I throw are just what I want them to be for their purpose but taking off the black coating does leave them very suseptible to rust. Is there any other process or treatment other than just constant oiling that makes sense for a blade like this? I kind of enjoy the aftermath of a throwing event as I sit down with each of my weapons, cleaning honing and oiling them before putting them to sleep it has become a sort of ritual I have come to enjoy. It would not upset me though if this was not as needed and was more of a ritual.

I usually bring clove oil

Yeah, it's been responsible for bout 30% of my firewood collecting/processing for this winter's house heating. It's been put through its paces daily for about two weeks, performed the job wonderfully, but needs to be re-oiled constantly, and the edge buffed to remove stuck material, etc. Wouldn't trade it for anything...just trying to nail down how I'm going to carry the necessary oil.

Greg another thing that has worked for me on the go is to use the fat off of whatever meat I cook as a kind of tallow to coat the blades of my hawk and dirk. Never used it on my sword blade but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

That probably would work in a pinch...but I typically use last night's bacon grease to fry my hardtack in the morning, so...yeah.