Corrosion or tarnish — what to do

[stumpstalker]

Originally Posted by Brian Dudley

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.