I had to leave in a hurry and left my blade in a plate lying in the kitchen sink. Now the blade is covered with rust and i'm wondering what kind of steel wool I should purchase to make it shiny again?



This is a Frosts S2 puuko in laminated steel, so maybe I should go easy in order not to remove this "lamination"? Uhh...

Try stabbing a lemon and leaving it to work for awhile, then working it around in the lemon a few times before removing it.

A scouring pad desined for teflon pans works well for this job and coating the blade with food grade mineral oil helps prevent this from happening.

I'd use some 00 steel wool and a light oil. 3-1 is good. Have some 0000 on-hand to finish up with. A scouring pad as mentioned would work fine too and will be quicker. It all depends on how much you care what the blade looks like. If it were me, I wouldn;t care much about some scouring scratches... you're going to grow old with that knife.

You WILL NOT hurt the exterior laminate....at least, not without a hammer or a grinder....maye a torch.

Just judging by the picture, it doesn;t look badly rusted.... it just looks "freshly" rusted. Your job should be easy.

Since mineral oil is a petroleum based product, can it safely be used to coat the blade? I have baby oil on hand, and this is mineral oil with added fragrance. The same question is valid for 3-in-1 oil, which I also have.

Maybe if this blade is prone to rusting, it should be reserved for tasks other than food prep?

Just wondering. Thanks!

Bee, I wouldn't shy away from using the knife for food, just clean it well right away after each use. I use HOT water and dish soap, rinsing with HOT water, then drying with a towel. You could then use a light coat of mineral oil, vegetable oil, 3in1 oil, the merits of each have been discussed here in other threads. I just use a little 3 in 1 if I use anything at all (after the HOT water cleaning).

You just can;t leave a carbon steel blade lying around after food prep like you can a kitchen blade. They're stainless steel so you rarely have a problem with them.

Bee,

I have a laminated S-1. The lamination is not some coating on the outside that can be removed. Once it is cleaned up again and if you look closely at the edge you will see that it is a three layer steel. The edge is the center layer and then there are layers sandwiched on both sides of that. So you have a super hard, but brittle, center with softer, but much stronger, layers on the outside.

If my S-1 looked like yours this is what I would do:
I would scrub it really well with a green pad. Then I would take a piece of 400 grit emery cloth and put it on a flat surface. I would rub the sides of the blade on it until I got all the rust off I could. Then I would sharpen the edge and call it good. Nothing like a knife with some character!