keris tajong for comment..

A. G. Maisey · 25th October 2007, 10:10 PM

Yeah, pineapple juice is more gentle than lemon. You can rely on it never doing any damage at all to a blade, even a very frail old blade. Lemon juice needs to be watched if you intend to soak.

For a blade in this condition it is likely that you'll need to work over it with something like a saddler's needle to pick the little hard bits of rust out of the pits. You can also spot really tough areas of rust with hydrochloric acid, but with this, you just paint it on and watch it while it works, then immediately rinse it off.

When its nice and clean, a good rub with steel wool and powder sink cleaner is good to finish with. In Jawa we use coconut husk and abu gosok, but sink cleaner and Ajax works just as well.

Its best to move straight to staining after the blade is clean. If you don't, it won't take long before you get light rust on the blade again.

If you fail to get rid of all the rust, when you come to staining you're going to get yellowish areas under the black.

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25th October 2007, 10:10 PM	#5
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,048	Yeah, pineapple juice is more gentle than lemon. You can rely on it never doing any damage at all to a blade, even a very frail old blade. Lemon juice needs to be watched if you intend to soak. For a blade in this condition it is likely that you'll need to work over it with something like a saddler's needle to pick the little hard bits of rust out of the pits. You can also spot really tough areas of rust with hydrochloric acid, but with this, you just paint it on and watch it while it works, then immediately rinse it off. When its nice and clean, a good rub with steel wool and powder sink cleaner is good to finish with. In Jawa we use coconut husk and abu gosok, but sink cleaner and Ajax works just as well. Its best to move straight to staining after the blade is clean. If you don't, it won't take long before you get light rust on the blade again. If you fail to get rid of all the rust, when you come to staining you're going to get yellowish areas under the black.