April 18, 20233 yr #1 Hello, I stumbled upon this forum while researching cleaning techniques for a couple of knives I inherited from my wife’s grandfather. I am amazed at the amount of collective knowledge here and hope you can give me some guidance about how to safely clean / stabilize them. A little background on provenance - my wife’s grandfather served in the Navy throughout all of WWII. He was on a ship in transit to Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. He arrived in Pearl a week after the attack and then served mostly stateside throughout the war as an aviation mechanic – he used to tell us that if you dumped all the individual parts for an F4U Corsair on the ground in front of him, he could put it all back together with no leftover parts. After the war he became an enlisted aircrew member on a P2V Neptune looking for Soviet submarines and received a citation for spotting one charging its batteries on the surface. He retired from the Navy in 1960. Here he is at his retirement ceremony – you can see a Neptune over his left shoulder in the background. He passed away in 2006. I inherited a couple of his knives which appear to be military issue and seem appropriate for his period and scope of service. One is a PAL RH-36 and the other is a Camillus 1950’s Pilot Survival knife. While I suspect they are USGI, each has a couple of characteristics that vary a bit from the similar knives I have researched on this forum. He was an avid outdoorsman, so I would not be surprised if these are commercial copies of knives he would have seen while in the Navy, just as I would look for a close replacement for the Ka-Bar I carried while in the Marine Corps. Both knives were stored for decades in a partially subterranean workshop and have been, unfortunately, quite neglected. I really don’t care about their monetary value, I only want to clean them up as best as possible without harming them and preserve them in my collection as a reminder of him. Basically, I want to do right by him and his knives. My questions are all about the cleaning / stabilization process. Is the 0000 steel wool and WD-40 / Kroil technique the best approach to remove the rust and grime in this particular condition? How would one go about cleaning / treating the leather handles? I have watched a few YouTube videos about saddle restoration and they recommend Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom Cleaner to remove the mold – this seems like a radical approach for a knife and I am worried about damaging the leather rings. I really have no interest in replacing the leather handles and prefer to stabilize the leather, remove the verdigiris and mold and keep as much of the original patina as possible. I have read about using Hoppes for the verdigris – would that be the better general approach for the handles? What treatment is best for the sheathes? The PAL RH-36 is in the better condition of the two, which isn’t saying much. It is a shiny version, not the parkerized. All the examples I have seen of PAL’s on this forum have red spacers at the guard and pommel, but this example has black spacers. Was that an option on issued knives? The second knife appears to be a 1950’s Camillus Pilot Survival knife and is in rough condition. Were these issued to all aircrew members or just pilots? The stamp on the ricasso is clearly Camillus, but the “NY” appears to be missing. It is identical to the photos of the knife at the very end of this thread: https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/370111-navy-looking-ka-bar-knife/#comment-2923529 I can’t tell from Skip’s photo of his collection of these knives if this is a legitimate variant of the Camillus mark. Both knives are very cool and will make great additions to my historic firearm and bayonet collection. Once cleaned up, they will look good displayed alongside my trusty Ka-bar. Thanks in advance for reading this far and for any advice you may have to offer. Arrin
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