I keep two old box knives in the kitchen junk drawer. One has a regular blade on it, and the other has a hooked blade because I think they’re safer and run less risk of damaging the stuff inside the box. But sometimes, you just need a regular box knife. They’re both old and handle rough, but they have seen a lot of use.
Last night I was painting. While trimming some masking tape against a hard edge I realized the blade on the regular box knife was a bit dull, so I went to change it. While flipping the blade around to the unused side, I noticed there were no more spare blades in the handle.
Today I bought a new pack of blades. They purport to be better quality and will stay sharper longer than the original set of blades that came with the knife, but I guess we’ll see how that holds up with use.
While adding the new blades into the handle, I decided to go ahead and clean up both knives - get all the tape residue out, and clean the internals. Then I gave the slightly rusty patina’d slide mechanisms a couple drops of 3-in-1 oil. I also gave the blades in the handle a drop along their sharp edges for good measure.
They open and close very satisfactorily now.
What a comfortably satisfying series of events
It was pointed out to me one of the downstairs doors was squeaking. So I took some WD40 down. I know it’s not a proper lubricant, but it seems to have always worked fine. I applied a squirt to the outside of the hinge expecting to then have to work the door back and forth to work it into the mechanism. But to my surprise the squeak went away instantly, no door swinging required!
A similar spray like wd40 that I prefer is Ballistol. Doesn’t seem to gather dirt and dust as much but that might just be me imagining things.