Possible really old pocket knife??

[clutch33]

Found on war of 1812 trail

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[villagenut]

sure looks like it. You can put it in distilled water for a week or so to leech out the chloride ions, which deteriorates old iron in the form of rust. Distilled water contains none, thus the leeching effects.Electrolysis surely will reveal more of what it is, but truthfully there ain't much there to preserve. Either of these methods will probably only leave you a few solid pieces of what is left, but at least you will see what it was..

 

[DigIron2]

it looks really old to me.It could very well date back to 1812 or earlyer.Sometimes they are very difficult to date.It looks very brittle.I would let the iron dry real well,maybe pick at it lightly with a small screw driver to get most of the thicker iron crust off,then maybe take a wire brush to it lightly.Nice find

 

[villagenut]

My experience with conservation of badly corroded artifacts, especially fragile ones, is to act quickly. Once out of the ground where it has lain for so long, there is a speeding up of the deterioration process. As they dry out ...they crumble. The distilled water does two things. One, it leeches out the salt which alleviates the breaking off of what good metal what is left. Two, it is a good stable environment for it until you decide the next step.This is why cannon and anchors are left in a solution while awaiting conservation, so as to not dry out. I know this is not an artifact of that nature, but it is an artifact in need of some measure of attention. To some it may be insignifigant, but I do try to conserve all old iron that I dig, if for nothing else... to identify it and photograph it for my own records. Old knives are cool relics worthy of a little help....imo