Pitting on blade

I would encourage you to search this forum seperately for the words "cleaning", "pitting", "peppering", and "patina". In a nutshell, in order to remove the pitting, you are going to have to remove enough of the surrounding metal to get below the pitting. Even then, it may come back. While virtually all collectors would prefer a pristine knife, they also prefer a pitted knife to one that has been made artificially shiny. You can clean the knife well with mild soap and water or an oily rag and then keep it oiled to stabilize the oxidation. Also, after cleaning, and before oiling, you can use warm vinegar to put a protective patina on the blade. Depending on how long you leave it in the vinegar, it will turn blue, grey, or black. My understanding is that the acid in the vinegar is reacting with the carbon in the blade. This controlled oxidation process is very similar in concept to "bluing" a rifle barrel, which is also a controlled "rust" process. The patina kinda works like intentionally burning the area in front of a wildfire to stop the progress of the blaze. If you want a more even patina you can clean the knife with alcohol before putting it in the vinegar. Also, if the initial patina is not even enough for your taste, you can LIGHTLY polish the patina with something like Flitz metal polish and then put it in the vinegar again.
 
there are numerous ways to clean pitting from a knife blade, but I would only reccomend it if you plan to use trhe knife. I don't agree with cleaning a knife to an artificial shine for resale like Barry says. If you could email or post pictures of the extent of the damage it would be easier to determine if all of it can be removed or not.
 
If I were to sand away pitting on my pocket knives, would that effect the strength of the blade?
 
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