Besides salt water, what do you find causes rust the most?

[JRinFL]

BKF is mainly oxalic acid. It will etch steel if left on, so rinsing very well is important. I would not use it on non-stainless steel myself.

[Evil D]

BKF is mainly oxalic acid. It will etch steel if left on, so rinsing very well is important. I would not use it on non-stainless steel myself.

OA baths are used a lot for removing rust on vintage bikes. Kinda odd that it's rough on steel, I guess maybe a bath is different than applying it directly. It's gentle enough to remove rust from chrome without damaging the factory decals.

[JRinFL]

I think it depends on the concentration. Sort of like vinegar, a little is good on salads, too much and it take the skin off your bones.

[James Y]

If I were still living in Taipei, Taiwan, I’d be carrying a linerless Salt. Especially during the summer months, but all year, really.

Jim

Hi Jim,

Our countries are much more closer than you can imagine. Lol. Surprisingly, tool steels actually do well in our tropical climate, its just that sometimes it can be a hit and miss with knife maintenance. Which is weird, because there were stretches of time when my M4s and Rex 45 blades didn't go with a hint of moisture protection sitting in my watertight box, and still come out unscathed. It was only recently though that my M4 GB2 started developing spots despite spending most of the time in the box with some light moisture repellent on the blade. I will try to put some small desiccant pouches that you get from pillboxes and see if it will help.

Hi, nerdlock,

Yes, I heard that on the southern tip of Taiwan, on a really clear day, you can see the northern Philippines, although I never got the chance to test that out. I lived in Taiwan from age 21 to almost 30 years old. Being from California, I wasn’t used to that level of humidity, and the literally constant sweating during the summer. I eventually grew to tolerate it, but without air conditioning where I lived, it was never comfortable.

During those years, the only knife I carried was a Victorinox Spartan Swiss Army Knife. It held up surprisingly well, but was always getting gunked up on the inside, because there were always dirt particulates in the air from construction going on around the city, and the often lack of breezes (Taipei lies in kind of a flat, natural “bowl”). Luckily, Victorinox’s stainless steel is polished and resists corrosion very well. But I never had a carbon tool steel knife while I was there. I imagine that most straight carbon knives would have rusted if I carried them in my pockets, especially carbon traditional pocketknives.

Jim

[Enactive]

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I think you need a hose brush. That has made a big difference for my hydration bladder hygiene. Disassemble as much as possible and scrub out. Osprey makes good stuff.

I have had good luck with baking soda as a cleaner too.

I think the internal diameters are the same or close enough. The brush i have is CamelBak brand and i use it on my Osprey. Note that the brush will be too short to do the entire hose at once, you will need to approach from both ends.

[The Mastiff]

BKF is mainly oxalic acid. It will etch steel if left on, so rinsing very well is important. I would not use it on non-stainless steel myself.

Thank you. I mix those two up. Comet has bleach which is a base? For me the end results were rust with both which is why I stopped using them.

I used to have break cleaner around for cleaning old surplus Mausers and Nagants and even knives. I noticed some has bleach and some doesn't, or used to anyways. I know nothing beat that stuff for getting caked grease and gunk off and getting down to metal. It sure smelled bad and I'd not recommend it except for well ventilated areas but decades of built up layers of grease and creosote would just melt away and run off like water. Very useful stuff.

[Tucson Tom]

Of materials I run across in my life, I find pool chlorine to be the strongest rust maker, followed by blood, sweat and the endless humidity here.

Muriatic acid. Any steel items stored near a closed bottle of it get rusted to heck and gone. HCl is a gas after all and sneaks out through the least gap. I haven't been storing any knives next to my bottles of pool acid (aka hydrochloric acid or muriatic acid), but I absolutely guarantee they would be severely rusted if I did. But do whatever you please in that regard.

[Doc Dan]

I would say Vivi's hands. Seriously, some people's body chemistry will rust steel, even stainless steel, for some reason. Mine will not do that. I can handle a blued firearm with safety and never have to wipe it down. Others can lightly touch a stainless knife and it will corrode.

Also, all hunters know that blood will corrode many knife steels, brass, bronze, copper, and a lot of other metals.

[emanuel]

I have pretty much stopped buying more tool steels because they rust in storage.

Hey Lance, before speaking of such blasphemy , I suggest you try a product called "Corrosionx" . It doesn't matter if it's the gun oil, aviation or whatever variant they sell, it's the same thing marketed in different bottles for different methods of application, but the active product is the same. It was a life changer for me, it's worth a try. There are multiple tests online and it always comes on top, salt water test, chlorine etc. If the US Navi uses it to coat the exposed areas of their ships, it might just be good enough for us. I just wish it was easier to buy here in Europe, ebay is my only chance. Luckily my guns and knives in storage don't use too much, for everything else I use victorinox oil.

[Ldg]

Urine

[Doc Dan]

I'm NOT going to ask how you know that! hahaha!

[npad69]

Lending my knife to my wife for all girls' tequila night

[Accutron]

Salt air is the invisible killer...

[curlyhairedboy]

that chart lays it all out, haha. fortunately with drier pockets i can carry tool steels. It's almost time for crucarta again...

[Evil D]

Well my phone crapped out on me and I don't even own a regular camera anymore so I can't get pics at the moment but I think there's some rust forming on my Caribbean. It's hard to say because it could just be dried blood but there are also some rust looking specs where the sea salt water was.

[James Y]

Back in the ‘70s, my first pocketknives were carbon steel Schrades. I found they would begin flat-out rusting from sitting in my pocket the first day. So I gave up on them after awhile. Other carbon steel pocketknives from Camillus and Ka-Bar held up much better. In fact, the Ka-Bar pocketknives barely rusted at all, and the Camillus ones would form a patina after carrying and using them for awhile, which was fine with me. I think a lot had to do with the relative blade finishes. Schrade used a slightly rough satin finish; Ka-Bar used a mirror finish; and the best I can describe the Camillus blades is an almost stone-washed finish. On all of those knives, the back springs naturally developed a patina.

Jim