Help! Need advice on removing rust spots

lagarto

lagarto

Joined
Oct 26, 2001
Messages
1,438
Hello all,
I, Lagarto the 8 fingered need some advice from the experts out there. I was looking over my Applegate - Fairbairn (boker made) boot knife earlier and noticed that it had some rust spots on it. At a recent knife show in town someone suggested that minor spots could be removed with a large school eraser. I tried this method and have made the following discoveries.

1. any method which requires me to vigorously rub back and forth in the vicinity of the sharp edge of a blade is a bad thing.
2. These knives come razor sharp right out of the box.
3. Blood droplets on white bathroom tiles make for a neat splatter paint effect.

After applying bandaids to the tips of two fingers I gave up on the eraser method and have decided to ask people more knowledgeable in such things for assistance. The knife is 440C with a bead blasted finish. A friend once said that he uses toothpaste to polish scratches out of Cd's because it is mildly abrasive. Might this work on a knife as well?

Thanks for any advice you might have.

Lagarto, the 8 fingered one
 
For minor rust spots like that I use Flitz. Works well and it's cheap.

Don't know if the toothpaste thing works or not but I have heard of people using it though.
 
Bok is right. Flitz works very good in my experiences. Flitz will also polish light scratches on blades, bolsters and such with some elbow grease.

A bead blast finish is more prone to rust than say a satin finish or mirror polish. I suggest coating the blade with Breakfree CLP or Birchwood Casey Sheath rust preventitive. Sheath works real good on folders and slip joints esecially if you are using the spray type. The jet stream action will get into all the little nooks and crannies.
Big D1
 
Again Flitz should work perfectly fine unless you got more serious rusting.
 
Thanks for the replies folks,
unfortunately I couldn't find any flitz around here, but did come up with some naval jelly. It did the trick, but now the question I have is this. The finish on the "treated" now appears a lot darker than on my other Boker made Applegate. What did I do to the poor thing? Thanks.
Lagarto
 
I have noticed that Navel jelly will stain some metals, Ive never used it on anything that was important, just on old axes or tools, and you can see the metal looks darker or brownish sometimes, I assume navel jelly does this just because of it's acidic properties? maybe because of dyes in it I don't know but I will bet that it stained your knife.
 
Flitz will remove stains and rust! I made the black, tarnished blades of a carbon steel slipjoint shine like new again!
I bet it would take off the stains caused by naval jelly.
:)
 
I thinks some of us semi Noobs need to know what the heck a flitz is and where do i get one??? :confused:

Okay okay I know flitz is some kind of cleaning product not a thing and I assume I can get it at like ACE or True Value or somthing. Sometimes I get I kick out of sounding dumber than I am. :D

But please tell me what the bottle looks like and which store you got it from.

Thanks
 
Link to the Flitz website:
Flitz

polish%20bottle.gif




P.S. get the paste over the liquid, a little esier to work with.
 
First - Good for you for taking quick action. Rust is the Cancer of any good blade. I recently discovered tiny dots of Rust on one of my D2 blades. When I started cleaning them off they became larger, meaning that the rust spots appeared tiny on the surface but they had actually eaten more of the material underneath that couldn't be seen!

Second - After you have finished up with your Applegate-Fairbairn pull out all of the other knives in your collection and give them a close inspection. Since your A-F is 440C, which has a very high corrosion resistance, you may find other blades that have just started to turn and you can clean them up much quicker.

Also, Flitz is an excellent polish. I have also used "Metal-Glo" polish but it is just a bit more abrasive than Flitz IMO. Also, you could look for "Happich Semichrome". I have never used that brand so if you do decide to try it, use a small amount on less prominent part of the blade to see what it does.

Good Luck.
 
Rust drives me crazy, i cant stand to have ANY rust on my knives. Its so bad my knives get scared when they get rust spots because i go chasing after them with some 600 grit sand paper and tuf-glide so fast they dont even see me coming :D
 
Oh, Flitz would definately abrade some of the finish. My Crawford/Kasper is actually much shiner than the new ones.
 
That’s great, I was just getting on to ask the same question. But my knife doesn’t have little rust spots, but some pretty big ones. I would say this knife is over 20 years old.

I'm not to sure about this, how do I attach image?


Thanks,
Bryan
 
I don't think you can attach an image with your public account.
Try using a picture hosting service (like yahoo) and then place the image link to the picture on the service or something like that.
 
Never Dull magic wadding compound. Can be found at some automotive shops and most motorcycle shops. It is a great non abrasive wadd type polishing compound, yes you can use it on a polished blade.
It was made to clean tar and light surface rust off chrome. It polishes and cleans very well leaving no scratches. It is also great for cleaning the black powder off your stainless steel firearms. If you have not tried this stuff, you need to pick up a can.
But, for a beadblast blade, try a green kitchen scrubber and some solvent. Then coat it with Breakfree CLP.
 
BryanY
e-MAIL me the pik you want posted, I have a server Ill stick it on for you and give you a url for it. If it will help ya.
 
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