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Old 4th December 2007, 12:14 AM   #3
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 6,987
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It can take several weeks in pineapple juice to completely remove all rust from a badly corroded blade.
Assisted by mechanical removal where necessary this will see the blade brought back to white ferric material.

This blade is badly corroded.

Be prepared to lose a considerably amount of material from the blade.

Alternatively do as Lew suggests and go no further.

If it were mine, I would continue the cleaning process, and depending on the end result, possibly do some limited reshaping of the blade at the end of the process.
Not everybody would agree with this approach; it is the philosophy of Solo, and not accepted by everybody, similarly, not everybody has the necessary knowledge or skill to carry out this reshaping correctly.

The difference in colour that have noted is caused by the heat-treat process:- this blade was taken to critical then quenched in a quench medium up to the line that marks the boundary between the dark and light colour. The fact that you can still see this indicates to me that although this blade is badly corroded, and you will lose some more material from it if you continue cleaning, you have probably already lost the bulk of of material that you will lose.
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