btb01
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2008
- Messages
- 7,687
I have a rust problem. (Well, hopefully I had a rust problem.)
As I recently shared elsewhere here on the Porch, at the end of May, we purchased a home here in Minnesota. The house was built in the '70s, and while it has been updated, there were still a few projects to busy myself with before we actually moved in. My father-in-law (a much more experienced do-it-yourself-er and handyman than I) spent a week up here helping out, and we got quite a lot done. After that, we moved everything from the place we were renting up to the new house, and have been busy unpacking and getting settled. (Those last two are still a work in progress, but we're getting there.)
As a result, knife stuff has taken a bit of a backseat, and I've gone from swapping out the knife in my pocket every few days to carrying just two knives over the last couple months. During the first few weeks after closing on the house -- the "project" period -- the only knife I carried was this Natural Canvas Micarta #71 Bull Nose.
Once we were in the house and started unpacking boxes, I also started carrying an Ebony #15 Crown Lifter, because the sheepsfoot blade was great for opening and breaking down boxes.
Now, this is our first summer here in Minnesota. Prior to that, we lived in Arizona (near Phoenix), where the summers are, of course, much hotter, but also significantly less humid. Now I'm no stranger to humidity -- the summers were plenty humid growing up in Arkansas -- but with the exception of a couple knives I had as a kid, my interest in and accumulation of traditional knives didn't really start until I was living in Arizona. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
As I was carrying and using the Bull Nose while working on projects in and around the house, I was at least somewhat mindful that I ought to keep an eye on it, wipe it down and oil it occasionally, check and make sure it wasn't soaked with sweat, etc. It did develop a few spots on the blade over those couple weeks, but nothing too bad.
The worst of it (which I didn't notice until later) was down along the inside of the backspring. Again, nothing all that bad, nor was it particularly surprising, as the knife was in my pocket every day and I was doing more work outside than I would typically do.
Now the Ebony Crown Lifter actually spent very little time in my pocket. I carried it for a few days when I knew we would be unpacking a lot of boxes, but for the most part I just kept it nearby in the house and would grab it to open or breakdown a box when needed. Well, this afternoon I picked it up off the desk where it was sitting to do just that, and as I was closing the blade, I was quite surprised by what I saw.
The liners definitely got the worst of it, but the inside of the backspring looked pretty rough, too.
And there was a nice new spot along the caplifter that hadn't been there before.
I think this mostly took me by surprise because, as I said, this knife hadn't been riding around in a sweaty pocket. For the most part, it had just been sitting around on various surfaces in the house. Now, for the last few days, the knife had been sitting in a room down in the finished walkout basement, where we've been "staging" boxes to be unpacked, sorted through, etc. And while the basement in this house doesn't seem particularly damp or humid, I know that its the general nature of basements to be more humid than other levels in a house.
Well, with that thought, I decided I ought to check on all my other knives, which are stored in an old parts cabinet I have in -- you guessed it -- the basement. The good news is that I didn't find anything as bad as that Crown Lifter. The bad news is that out of 70-some GECs (the rest of my knives are still packed away), I pulled out just shy of two dozen that showed rust on them somewhere.
Now, here are a few things that I noticed:
Almost all of the knives that exhibited rust were knives that, at some point, I've carried and used more often than others. With a single exception (which I'll explain below), none of my unused or rarely used knives had any rust on them. It was just the users.
I also noticed that the majority of the knives with rust were those with steel liners rather than brass. There were a few knives with brass liners that had a bit of rust down on the inside of the backspring, but not many. And most of the all-steel knives I pulled out had some rust on both the liners and the backspring.
Finally (and thankfully), I noticed that almost all the rust was on the liners and backsprings. I only found one knife (besides the Crown Lifter) with any spots on the blade, and it was minimal.
So, this evening I spent several hours oiling (I went with Ballistol for this application instead of my regular mineral oil) and cleaning off all the rusty liners and backsprings. Not my idea of fun, but they look a lot better now. (The Crown Lifter still needs a bit of work, I might have to get some 0000 steel wool, or maybe try the corner of a Scotch Brite pad to get all the rust off the liners.)
This was one was a bit strange. This is a completely unused Northfield #78. No rust anywhere on it except down inside the long pull, which was quite red.
I sprayed some oil in there, started digging around with a toothpick, and loosened a layer of what I assume must have been some sort of metallic sediment down in the long pull that had rusted. Once I scraped that gunk out completely, the long pull looked good as new.
My next step is to find a solution so hopefully this doesn't happen again. I assume that the problem here is the level of humidity in the basement. (I moved a hygrometer from one of my cigar humidors down to the basement this afternoon, and it's reading between 60% and 65% RH.) Obviously it would be great to store the knives somewhere other than the basement, but that's not really feasible given the layout of the upstairs space compared to the basement. I know some folks use desiccant packets where they store their knives, which might be a possibility. I'd be curious to know if anyone has any other suggestions, particularly anyone who happens to store their knife collection in a room in their basement.
As I recently shared elsewhere here on the Porch, at the end of May, we purchased a home here in Minnesota. The house was built in the '70s, and while it has been updated, there were still a few projects to busy myself with before we actually moved in. My father-in-law (a much more experienced do-it-yourself-er and handyman than I) spent a week up here helping out, and we got quite a lot done. After that, we moved everything from the place we were renting up to the new house, and have been busy unpacking and getting settled. (Those last two are still a work in progress, but we're getting there.)
As a result, knife stuff has taken a bit of a backseat, and I've gone from swapping out the knife in my pocket every few days to carrying just two knives over the last couple months. During the first few weeks after closing on the house -- the "project" period -- the only knife I carried was this Natural Canvas Micarta #71 Bull Nose.
Once we were in the house and started unpacking boxes, I also started carrying an Ebony #15 Crown Lifter, because the sheepsfoot blade was great for opening and breaking down boxes.
Now, this is our first summer here in Minnesota. Prior to that, we lived in Arizona (near Phoenix), where the summers are, of course, much hotter, but also significantly less humid. Now I'm no stranger to humidity -- the summers were plenty humid growing up in Arkansas -- but with the exception of a couple knives I had as a kid, my interest in and accumulation of traditional knives didn't really start until I was living in Arizona. I'm sure you can see where this is going.
As I was carrying and using the Bull Nose while working on projects in and around the house, I was at least somewhat mindful that I ought to keep an eye on it, wipe it down and oil it occasionally, check and make sure it wasn't soaked with sweat, etc. It did develop a few spots on the blade over those couple weeks, but nothing too bad.
The worst of it (which I didn't notice until later) was down along the inside of the backspring. Again, nothing all that bad, nor was it particularly surprising, as the knife was in my pocket every day and I was doing more work outside than I would typically do.
Now the Ebony Crown Lifter actually spent very little time in my pocket. I carried it for a few days when I knew we would be unpacking a lot of boxes, but for the most part I just kept it nearby in the house and would grab it to open or breakdown a box when needed. Well, this afternoon I picked it up off the desk where it was sitting to do just that, and as I was closing the blade, I was quite surprised by what I saw.
The liners definitely got the worst of it, but the inside of the backspring looked pretty rough, too.
And there was a nice new spot along the caplifter that hadn't been there before.
I think this mostly took me by surprise because, as I said, this knife hadn't been riding around in a sweaty pocket. For the most part, it had just been sitting around on various surfaces in the house. Now, for the last few days, the knife had been sitting in a room down in the finished walkout basement, where we've been "staging" boxes to be unpacked, sorted through, etc. And while the basement in this house doesn't seem particularly damp or humid, I know that its the general nature of basements to be more humid than other levels in a house.
Well, with that thought, I decided I ought to check on all my other knives, which are stored in an old parts cabinet I have in -- you guessed it -- the basement. The good news is that I didn't find anything as bad as that Crown Lifter. The bad news is that out of 70-some GECs (the rest of my knives are still packed away), I pulled out just shy of two dozen that showed rust on them somewhere.
Now, here are a few things that I noticed:
Almost all of the knives that exhibited rust were knives that, at some point, I've carried and used more often than others. With a single exception (which I'll explain below), none of my unused or rarely used knives had any rust on them. It was just the users.
I also noticed that the majority of the knives with rust were those with steel liners rather than brass. There were a few knives with brass liners that had a bit of rust down on the inside of the backspring, but not many. And most of the all-steel knives I pulled out had some rust on both the liners and the backspring.
Finally (and thankfully), I noticed that almost all the rust was on the liners and backsprings. I only found one knife (besides the Crown Lifter) with any spots on the blade, and it was minimal.
So, this evening I spent several hours oiling (I went with Ballistol for this application instead of my regular mineral oil) and cleaning off all the rusty liners and backsprings. Not my idea of fun, but they look a lot better now. (The Crown Lifter still needs a bit of work, I might have to get some 0000 steel wool, or maybe try the corner of a Scotch Brite pad to get all the rust off the liners.)
This was one was a bit strange. This is a completely unused Northfield #78. No rust anywhere on it except down inside the long pull, which was quite red.
I sprayed some oil in there, started digging around with a toothpick, and loosened a layer of what I assume must have been some sort of metallic sediment down in the long pull that had rusted. Once I scraped that gunk out completely, the long pull looked good as new.
My next step is to find a solution so hopefully this doesn't happen again. I assume that the problem here is the level of humidity in the basement. (I moved a hygrometer from one of my cigar humidors down to the basement this afternoon, and it's reading between 60% and 65% RH.) Obviously it would be great to store the knives somewhere other than the basement, but that's not really feasible given the layout of the upstairs space compared to the basement. I know some folks use desiccant packets where they store their knives, which might be a possibility. I'd be curious to know if anyone has any other suggestions, particularly anyone who happens to store their knife collection in a room in their basement.
Hope you can get the problem under control 
