Ikea has a scrub brush that cleans my knife like magic. My F1 was all gunked and scuffed up, and to my surprise, when I used that scrubbie thing for cleaning dishes (because that's all we had), the F1 looked like new again.

My LTC has a coating on it and it looks pretty had it. A friend of ours gave us one of those Ikea scrubbie cleaner brushes. I may try it out on the LTC or not.

I always thought the coating on a blade would make for not enough friction for good sparks. Not like I would really know. I never tried using my LTC to make fire, just cut and split wood.