Corrosion or tarnish — what to do
 

What would you do to this trigger guard to make it look better?

Guard
 

What I did to one of mine.
Ballistal and Fortier pad.

Apart from cleaning it and removing any actual active rust, there is not much you can do to make it look any different. Just rebluing it.

Exactly the advice a vintage knife expert would give a collector.

If aggressive polishing is resorted to, e.g., as per a buffing wheel, so as to efface corroded metal, it is a dead giveaway that something incalculably ugly had been there. The imagination runs wild.

With the active rust removed what remains is a cared-for object, with character.

I've heard of everything from Flitz, Big 45 Frontier Metal Cleaner, 0000 steel wool, WD 40, baking soda, to Bar Keepers Friend ...

I'm not looking to polish it -- just get the active rust, if that's what it is, out. It's more like tiny spots of corrosion. I think the engraving would look better without it.

That looks good to me. Maybe others like the patina look better ...

Ron:

The active rust is red.

Take Scott G's advice, it will not harm the guard and leave it with it's original finish.

Unfortunately or maybe in this case fortunately I'm red / green color deficient

A Google search for "Fortier pad" yielded zero results

Frontier pad
http://www.big45metalcleaner.com/

Frontier
 

Sorry fat fingers

Is Scott G's Ballistol mildly abraisive or just a chemical cleaner? His results are pretty nice.

Ballistol is a mineral oil-based lubricant.

Well then, the Frontier pad is the main tool in our quiver?

FRONTIER 45 pad.

The Frontier pad is the key for the cleaning process used, I suspect, with the oil serving as a slurry helping to slough off removed particles with the added benefit of it protecting the newly exposed metal.

Vintage knife authority, Bernard Levine, is not all that popular with many in the knife collecting community. He has had the temerity to say that sophisticated knife collectors avoid buying buffed knives, but the problem as he puts it, is that most knife collectors are not sophisticated.

But just like on here, some of the best advice is the advice we don’t want to hear.

He recommends removing active rust by working with a mild abrasive, as did Scott with the Frontier pad, and light oil. Too much aggressiveness is the problem. As he puts it in LEVINE’S GUIDE TO KNIVES AND THEIR VALUES, 3rd Ed., on page 22:

”Over-eager polishing destroys any remaining original finish…It softens all contours and edges. It eliminates all traces of honest age….IT SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCES IT’S VALUE TO A SERIOUS AND KNOWLEDGEABLE COLLECTOR” (capitals in the original).

before and after
 

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I decided to stay away from abrasives and instead use an old piece of MidwayUSA Rust and Lead Remover Gun Cleaning Cloth that I found in my tool box. I did the trigger guard as well as the rest of the receiver. They still sell it if you liked the way it came out:

"This marvelous cloth was designed to work on virtually any metal surface to remove rust, tarnish, lead, and other stains. The non-abrasive cotton cloth is impregnated with a cleaning solution, and has hundreds of uses around the shop.

Use it for:

Cleaning stubborn lead and carbon fouling from revolver cylinders.
Removing plastic fouling from shotgun chambers and choke tubes.
Removing tarnish from your favorite hunting knife.
Cleaning your reloading press and dies.
Restoring old rusty tools in the shop to new condition."

Corrosion or Tarnish - what to do
 

I think the word is Frontier as in Frontier pad and not fortier.

Try Frontier Pad

Its "Frontier 45", not 'Fortier'.

Spelling
 

My post was from my cellphone and my fat fingers or spellcheck changed the spelling, I will try to do better job. Sorry.