This post is titled:

Aburatsubo Mini-Project

No joke, I'm calling this a project even though there wasn't much work involved in it. It's an aburatsubo, a Japanese tool oiler made from a piece of bamboo.

Aburatsubo, Closed

It's essentially a big magic marker filled with oil instead of ink. After you use a steel tool, you should clean it and give it a light coating of oil to keep it from rusting. You could oil it just by dripping or spraying some oil on it and wiping it down, or by simply giving it a few swipes with an aburatsubo. Here it is, open.

Aburatsubo, Open

The wider, shorter piece of bamboo is just the cap. The longer piece is the body of the aburatsubo. The body has been filled with a rolled up piece of cotton cloth. What I did was fill the cap with oil, then put the body head down into the cap until it soaked up all the oil. I did this a few times until the cloth was well-saturated with oil. You don't want it too soaked, or it will drip and the tools will have much more oil on them than necessary. The basic goal is to leave a light coating.

2010.04.01 at 12:00am EDT

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