Ahhhh...rust...

[Rubber Ducky]

I'm a bad man and I let one of my knives rust. So now I need to clean it and make it purty again.

What are some suggestions for cleaning rust off of a small carbon steel knife blade? Unfortunately I lack in the power tool department, so manual suggestions are most welcome.

I promise, I won't do it again....

Pierre

 

[Charlie Mike]

Get some 600 grit silicon carbide sandpaper and work the whole thing over. Then finish it with higher grit if you want a more mirror finish.

 

[made2cut]

YOU LET YOUR KNIFE RUST!!!???? I think you should be banned from the forums

Just kidding I had some rust on a folder with ATS34 (bad heat treat IMHO) and I didn't want to scratch the finish so I used some sort of rust removal stuff that contained acid. It did the job okay but discolored the blade slightly where it was used.

 

[calyth]

If it's light, you could try flitz with some sort of abrasive and see if you could rub the rust off.
Or else you could try to manually sand the rust away using wet and dry sandpaper.