Should D2 rust this easily?

[afultz075]

I just bought a red Benchmade 960 in D2 from NGK about a month ago. From reading about this steel, I know it is only semi-stainless and needs a bit more care than other stainless steels. I have only carried it about 4 times, and after each carry I am sure to wipe the blade with my shirt and coat the blade with Tuf-Cloth. It then goes into it's box and into my dresser drawer where I keep my collection.
Recently I took all my knives out and inspected how the blades were holding up under the reading lamp on my desk. On the 960 I noticed several tiny brown dots on the blade, and by tiny, I mean the size of a pin prick. They are not the trademark orange color of rust, more of a brown, so I am not 100% sure if what i'm seeing is true rust.
I just can't understand why this is happening with all the care I give this blade and the stable, dry environment it mostly lives in. It may be possible that the spots were always there, as they would only be noticeable to the most scrutinizing eye.

 

[garymengineer]

I have the same knife, and have had no problems, but I usually keep it in my dresser. I'll let you know if I observe the rust on my knife.

 

[afultz075]

Also, it's not characteristic of most rust where it's raised and will catch on a fingernail or something similar. Using both my fingernail and SAK tweezers it glides right over the spots. And like I said they're so small where even the most discerning eyes might overlook this even in the right light.

 

[STR]

I've personally had less trouble with rust on my D2 blades than I have with S30V. D2 is the most stainless of the non stainless steels and many makers including myself have bead blasted blades and parts made out of it with little or no problems at all. It will rust though if left unattended after being wet. I've noticed when grinding D2 for example that it is much more prone to rusting and doing so fast before hardening from the dipping in water I do during the shaping of the blade and parts. Its just that very thin surface rust that appears though and wipes right off. Surface rust of this nature has also occurred on ATS34 I've been grinding though and again wipes right off.

It may be that before you got the knife the blade got wet and was left that way long enough for a few pits to form that are deeper than the rest of the surrounding surface of the blade allowing moisture you think you are wiping off to still settle down in the recess caused by the small amount of pitting. It could just be uneven surfaces in the micro structure of the blade itself giving the moisture small pockets to settle into as well. Try blasting the blade with some dry air after wiping next time and see if that keeps it from reoccurring. If so you can kind of put two and two together and figure its got some micro pockets on the blade kind of the same as what bead blasting does to one.

It is possible it could be something other than rust also. I know I cut myself once and it barely bled but enough to get small amounts on everything I touched including my blade when I'd open it up. I left tell tale blood stain on the blade in small amounts and at first it looked just like rust to me.

STR