Is 8cr13mov hard to clean when badly rusted?

[JasonC6612]

Is there a point a knife could rust beyond repair or point of use?

[CanadaDude]

Take a toothbrush and put it under the tap to make it wet. Now dip it in baking soda (bicarbonate of soda). Use this toothbrush to scrub the rust off your knife. Keep adding more baking soda and continue scrubbing the blade with the toothbrush for at least five minutes. Examine the results and repeat as necessary.

[araneae]

There are plenty of metal polishes and cleaning products available that will clean up most degrees of surface rust (flitz, maas, bon ami, barkeeper's friend, etc). If you let rust go and pits form, it can't be removed with any polish. The knife certainly is still usable even if pitted, it just won't look very pretty.

[Evil D]

I think with the chemicals we have available today, you could take a blade like this:


(assuming we were dealing with a knife that could easily be taken apart)

And bring it back into usable shape. The reality is, aside from being seized up, you could throw an edge on that top knife and if the rust isn't so bad that there just isn't any steel left to sharpen, you'd eventually get down to good steel and it would take an edge and still function.

The main issues that come to mind are the pivot and lock face. If either of those are severely pitted, that could cause some issues. The pivot, that may just make for a crappy pivot action and most likely some blade play due to corrosion and loss of surface area, which would make the pivot hole larger. But the lock face, that's the biggest spot that could render a folder useless. If the lock face were pitted bad enough, I would imagine it could compromise the action of the lock and prevent it from locking.

So, yes and no. You can almost always remove rust, even if it results in severe pitting, but the lock face especially is an area that I wouldn't want to see any rust forming.

[dcfis]

wow

[Donut]

Someone I know found a pretty rusted up, old slipjoint.

I cleaned up the blade, but the spring was in such bad shape that I couldn't oil it back into good working condition.

[dbcad]

If the Tenacious is badly rusted there might be some residual pitting after the rust is cleaned off.

I cleaned up a circa 1900 knife that belonged to my grandfather.It was a block of rust like what EvilD showed. Steel wool and scothbrite pads were needed with a bunch of wd-40.

A picture of the Tenacious would be very helpful to give you the appropriate advice.

Only you know if it would be worth it, heck instead of trashing it. I might ask you to send it to me as a small project. A picture would be a good first step though.

Charlie