AFAustin
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2004
- Messages
- 2,494
What follows is no doubt old news to many, but it was a small and welcome revelation to me.
I often find myself wanting to polish a blade which is scratched up or has minor pitting or blemishes or other issues. When the blade has a mirror finish I have usually been frustrated. I understand the normal procedure is to start with a grit just coarse enough to remove the scratches, etc., and to apply it as long as it takes to completely eliminate them. Then you move on to the next grit, just a tad coarser than the preceding one, and apply it perpendicular to the marks left by the prior grit, continuing till all remnants of the previous scratches are gone. You continue on in this fashion through all the grits. In theory, this should ultimately result in a restored mirror finish.
This is a long tedious process when doing it by hand, and I don't have a buffer so that's what I do. But I do have several sets of Micro Mesh pads, including a set of MX pads (designed for metal), with 13 in the set, starting at 60MX and ending with 1200MX. That is going from about 60 micron to about 3 micron, as per the Micro Surface (Micro Mesh manufacturer) conversion chart, with narrow spacing between grits. I have followed the "perpendicular" procedure mentioned above, spritzed the pads with a solution of water with a drop of dish soap added (for increased "lubricity"), taken my time, used moderate pressure, checked my progress frequently under a strong light, etc. But I have never yet been able to restore a true mirror finish. The best I can do is a "cloudy" finish, which I know means I didn't completely remove one or more sets of scratch marks as I progressed through it.
Recently I bought a nice Case trapper from a fellow BF member, and the blades had had a satin finish applied at some point, and done horizontally along the length of the blades. Frankly, I thought the blades looked great, and the proverbial light bulb came on in my old brain. With the next couple of knives I had whose blades needed some work, I forewent the "mirror" goal and instead used my same MX pads to do a full grit progression lengthwise (horizontally) only---no alternating perpendicular scratch marks. The result is a nice light and uniform satin finish, which is pleasing to my eye, and which will also minimize the visibility of future scratches. A big bonus is that the process is also a lot faster since I don't even have to try to completely eliminate all vestiges of the prior grit---a small amount of "leftover" just blends in with the final satin finish.
The pics below show my "light bulb" knife (the burnt bone trapper) and one of mine (the black bone trapper) which then got the horizontal satin treatment. (The latter has carbon blades and the beginnings of a patina can be seen.) These pics don't show the finish very well at all but accurately capturing blade finish is just about beyond my poor photography skills. I may try to post some better ones after a bit.
In any event, I'm sure there are plenty of guys who can accomplish a mirror finish by hand, but I'm not one of them, at this point in my learning at least. In the meantime, I am a happy "satin guy" (and my right arm has quit aching
).
Thanks for reading.
Andrew
(no extra charge for the small dog sniffing around in the background.)
I often find myself wanting to polish a blade which is scratched up or has minor pitting or blemishes or other issues. When the blade has a mirror finish I have usually been frustrated. I understand the normal procedure is to start with a grit just coarse enough to remove the scratches, etc., and to apply it as long as it takes to completely eliminate them. Then you move on to the next grit, just a tad coarser than the preceding one, and apply it perpendicular to the marks left by the prior grit, continuing till all remnants of the previous scratches are gone. You continue on in this fashion through all the grits. In theory, this should ultimately result in a restored mirror finish.
This is a long tedious process when doing it by hand, and I don't have a buffer so that's what I do. But I do have several sets of Micro Mesh pads, including a set of MX pads (designed for metal), with 13 in the set, starting at 60MX and ending with 1200MX. That is going from about 60 micron to about 3 micron, as per the Micro Surface (Micro Mesh manufacturer) conversion chart, with narrow spacing between grits. I have followed the "perpendicular" procedure mentioned above, spritzed the pads with a solution of water with a drop of dish soap added (for increased "lubricity"), taken my time, used moderate pressure, checked my progress frequently under a strong light, etc. But I have never yet been able to restore a true mirror finish. The best I can do is a "cloudy" finish, which I know means I didn't completely remove one or more sets of scratch marks as I progressed through it.
Recently I bought a nice Case trapper from a fellow BF member, and the blades had had a satin finish applied at some point, and done horizontally along the length of the blades. Frankly, I thought the blades looked great, and the proverbial light bulb came on in my old brain. With the next couple of knives I had whose blades needed some work, I forewent the "mirror" goal and instead used my same MX pads to do a full grit progression lengthwise (horizontally) only---no alternating perpendicular scratch marks. The result is a nice light and uniform satin finish, which is pleasing to my eye, and which will also minimize the visibility of future scratches. A big bonus is that the process is also a lot faster since I don't even have to try to completely eliminate all vestiges of the prior grit---a small amount of "leftover" just blends in with the final satin finish.
The pics below show my "light bulb" knife (the burnt bone trapper) and one of mine (the black bone trapper) which then got the horizontal satin treatment. (The latter has carbon blades and the beginnings of a patina can be seen.) These pics don't show the finish very well at all but accurately capturing blade finish is just about beyond my poor photography skills. I may try to post some better ones after a bit.
In any event, I'm sure there are plenty of guys who can accomplish a mirror finish by hand, but I'm not one of them, at this point in my learning at least. In the meantime, I am a happy "satin guy" (and my right arm has quit aching
).Thanks for reading.
Andrew
(no extra charge for the small dog sniffing around in the background.
)
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