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When you are holding your racket, while playing, nobody can see the handle.
that is of course true but then the handle does look pretty "grubby" and if one pays good money for a nice trophy like that one wants to at least clean it up a bit and have a "new start".
Then there are of course the questions of hygiene and maybe even covid dangers to consider.
I am, of course, joking around. But, I also find it odd that someone would care about how clean their racket handle is.
How long can CoVID live on wood surfaces? How long is it going to take for the blade to be shipped?
On more porous surfaces like cardboard CoVid does not live more than 24 hours. On the kind of surface of the porous wood handle of a Viscaria, it probably can't live as long as it will take to ship. So, I am not sure CoVID is something that would be transmitted that way. Or we all would be getting it from any kind of online shopping. No need to spread fear on the subject.
I would use a finish equivalent to Watco's Danish Oil to treat the handle after cleaning rather than a polyurethane based finish as a poly finish will make the handle feel like plastic. An oil type finish will retain the natural texture of the wood.ers the
I have to be honest. TT handles are designed to absorb your sweat which makes it so they are good for playing, naked, how they come. Everyone has a right to do what they want with their blades whether it is make them fastidiously clean, oiling, sealing. But a handle with nothing on it is very useful for how you can shift your grip without thinking about shifting your grip, for how the racket lays in your hand, and how it allows you to feel the ball contact.
With nothing, the handle does what it is supposed to do. Add a layer of polyurethane sealant and you stop the ability of the wood to get water away from your hand. And the handle will not feel as good in your hand and, this also could impact what you feel from the ball contact. At least, that is my experience.
Using Oil might be fine. I have never tried. But I just don't see that there is a reason.
I know some people like racket grip tape on the handle. I guess that is a choice too. If your hand is especially large, perhaps that is a reason for that kind of modification. But tape on the handle also never felt good to me and this also blocks the feeling of the contact.
When the choices someone makes about their equipment are about the aesthetics, how the blade looks when it is sitting on the table (not in your hand) rather than how the blade plays, how it feels, how your hand interacts with the handle and feels the ball on contact, then I would seriously question what the actual purpose of the modifications are.
In my opinion, the aesthetics of a blade are a trivial matter next to how the blade feels and responds during play.
In my case, my hand does sweat and it soaks into the handles of some blades which causes it to stink over time and my hand to smell after playing. Having a somewhat sensitive sense of smell, this is an issue which I solve with the aforementioned oil finish. The oil finish itself would smell like fish for some days but that goes away once it completely cures.