How To Before and after gifted Camillus Wildlife series knives

[T. Erdelyi]

A member here, Sonnydaze, (Don), was generous enough to gift me 2 Camillus folders that looked to be in need of some tlc.

When I clean the first thing I try is some type of non abrasive cleaner like bon-a-mi or comet. These work very well without scratching the metal or plastic. A form of nondestructive cleaning.

Here were the two knives before. A 1977 Camillus 17B Bird Knife with a pewter duck in profile in and a ‘77 Camillus 10C running deer both in sculpted pewter and both part of the Wildlife series by Sid Bell. I also notice they were stainless blades. much easier to clean and what was probably on it wasn’t rust. .

Non abrasive cleanser works great, a little elbow grease and with some luck the blade etch will be intact.

Usually I try som oil first to lift off the rust, all I had was olive oil . .It did the job and the comet finished it up knicely .

Make a paste and scrub. The non abrasive cleanser won’t scratch the blade or remove the etchings.

Now the bird knife.

I used a Brillo pad on the back springs and I was done.

 

[rpttrsn]

Looks very good. Nice work.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

I love the fact that the blade etchs stayed intact. As soon as I saw stainless on the catalog page I decided to gently clean it.

Here’s the ad from their catalog.

 

[eKretz]

Contrary to popular belief, stainless can rust. The difference is that it will almost always only rust right on the surface and normally won't pit deeply like plain steel. For it to pit deeply into the steel, the knife would have to be exposed to more than just water (most likely some sort of chemical) and probably kept wetted for quite a long time.

Surface rust on stainless can occur from any free iron or steel particles in the air settling on the blade and getting wetted there. Same goes for polishing stainless with any abrasive that has been used on plain steel. Even something as simple as skinning an animal and not cleaning the blade well (blood contains trace amounts of iron) can possibly result in the formation of surface rusting on stainless. There is a process called passivation that can help reduce or mostly eliminate this. Abrading the stainless after it's been performed negates this process though and it has to be performed over again. It is basically making the top layer of steel as chemically inert as possible.

Nice job on the cleanup, and good on ya' Sonnydaze! That is a great pair of knives there.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

The non abrasive cleanser I used was Comet,

but you can use Bon Ami

if you’re in Europe. Any powdered non abrasive cleanser works, look in the kitchen cleanser area in the store for it.