What Caused This Damage to the Knife Spine?

T

TheFishman

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Aug 23, 2022
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I picked up a 1994 110 at a flea market today. It was extremely tarnished. The only thing really wrong with it was this damage to the spine. Any idea what caused this? The guy selling the knife thought it might have been contact with an electrical current somehow. It doesn't look like it was caused by rust and the knife was not rusty. It is almost like the steel just crumbled away. Any thoughts?

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Does look like either electrical damage or something extremely corrosive got it.

Meh. Clean it up then see how far you can push it. I’d use it as a total beater and see if it could still stand up to use. If it gives up the ghost Buck will fix it.
 
Could be an arc? But they usually look like craters rather than cut out chunks. Is all that brown stuff around it dirt or discoloration.. an arc could leave that filmy color on steel.
 
Interesting back story on this knife. The blade has Jeff's B'day '95 engraved on one side while the other side says Love Dad. Jeff also carved his name on the back of the sheath. It was an unusual name and I found Jeff in Minnesota and contacted him to see if he wanted his knife back. It was a birthday present from his dad when he was 12. He said the knife was stolen about 10 years ago. He did want it back so I should be able to return it to him this week. It cleaned up nicely and I sharpened it. He said the spine wasn't damaged when it was stolen, so there is no telling what happened. We are just trying to figure out how a knife stolen in Minnesota made its way to a flea market in south Mississippi.

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TheFishman said:
Interesting back story on this knife. The blade has Jeff's B'day '95 engraved on one side while the other side says Love Dad. Jeff also carved his name on the back of the sheath. It was an unusual name and I found Jeff in Minnesota and contacted him to see if he wanted his knife back. It was a birthday present from his dad when he was 12. He said the knife was stolen about 10 years ago. He did want it back so I should be able to return it to him this week. It cleaned up nicely and I sharpened it. He said the spine wasn't damaged when it was stolen, so there is no telling what happened. We are just trying to figure out how a knife stolen in Minnesota made its way to a flea market in south Mississippi.

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very cool. glad to see it will make it back to the owner. I had a knife made for my late brother to commemorate my wedding. He lost it in Boston during a move. Wish I could get that one back.
 
To me it looks like it was exposed to some very corrosive chemical elements. Not only the blade but the brass bolsters show acid or caustic effects. I’ve worked around that stuff and that looks like the kind of corrosion I’ve seen on various metals that were exposed to them.
Also 420hc isn’t corrosion or rust proof. There are some chrome nickel alloys that are very resistant to corrosion but they don’t make good knife blades.

its good you found the original owner, good work !
 
The brass corrosion is probably from sitting in the leather sheath. The knife and sheath may have been exposed to something else also as the snap button on the sheath was corroded. I am not sure if moisture or humidity would cause the snap to corrode. It looks like the snap was snapped closed and then the corrosion locked it together. When someone tried to open the sheath, it pulled the snap off the inside flap of the sheath. The piece on the outside of the flap and the inside of the sheath are still there, but the actual pieces that snap together are gone.

I have been looking for a beat up knife to practice my cleaning skills. This one cleaned up nicely except for the damage to the spine. Everyone should be encouraged that an ugly knife can be made almost new again with a little hard work. The knife looks better now than even in the after photo I posted.
 
For those wondering how I located Jeff, he had an uncommon last name. There were two possible candidates I found by just searching his name. One was in his early 20s and wasn't born in 1995. That left the one in Minnesota and I used his Facebook page to contact him.

It is scary how much information you can find on people just by typing their name into a search engine. This won't work for someone named Bob Jones or John Smith, but if their name isn't that common or you know a city or state, you can find all kinds of details. While on a bike ride a few years ago, I found a cell phone on the road. The phone was locked, but the emergency contact had Jennifer and a birth date. I was able to use just a first name and birth date to locate her last name. I then was able to use a basic web search to locate her address and Facebook page and reunite her with her phone. Again, it is scary how much information is out there with just basic web searches.
 
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