Salt pot causing pitting on blades

[rtj1981]

I've had my salt pot for a little over two years and recently it has started causing pitting in blades I heat treat with it. I thought maybe it was because I wasn't careful enough to rinse the blades afterwards but I just heat treated a batch of knives, cleaned and sanded the blades and noticed they were still pitted. Any ideas on why this is happening? The pitting is deep enough that I have to take the knife blades back to a grinder to get all the marks out.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Have you been neutralizing your salts?

 

[rtj1981]

Thanks for the reply Stacy, no I haven't been neutralizing them. I remembered reading something about this when I was researching building mine in the first place but couldn't remember exactly what it entailed. I noticed the last time I had it running the salt had a "film" on the top when it was melted that wasn't there before. It seems like I read somewhere that you need to use a carbon rod to skim this off?

 

[cdent]

The salt bath sticky up at the top of the page here might help out.

Take care, Craig