Anyone mirror polish cpks!

If you hold this post up to your ear, you can hear the purists cringing... :)

I've not, but have polished other things. Either of those methods would work. To get rid of the stonewash scratches you'll probably want to take your time starting with something around 300 or 400 grit. If you progress to around 1500 or 2000 grit with sandpaper, or equivalent with stones, you could save time for the final pollish with a buffing wheel and some compound. If you have a handheld buffer like for a car, you can put it in a vice and use it like a bench tool with some Flitz or some other compound on a buffing pad.

The hard part is finding scratches you didn't work out from the stonewash/lower grits, which are hard to see until you've got it pretty polished. Then you have to go back and rework those areas from low to high grit again. How perfect do you want it to be?

Patience is probably the most important tool for this job, as the wear resistant Delta 3V is not going to make this job easy on you.

Some thoughts: Not sure what this will do to the resale value. Also this seems like a long job to get to "perfect." I imagine you'll polish under the scales too? From what I know, it takes a Japanese sword polisher around a month of fulltime work to polish a sword with finger stones. If you're a perfectionist, but you're like me and lose interest before this kind of lengthy job is complete, you'll end up with a half-done knife, without many options other than sending it to someone else to either finish the job (something you might consider doing from the start if you're serious), or sending it back to the factory to redo the stonewash and resharpen.

So before you start, and knowing yourself, make double-sure you're double-sure. 😀

Good luck!
 
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Nothing worse than a poorly done mirror finish. Do it right and do it all the way or don't do it at all.

220 through 600 grit N grade maker stones, then 400 grit through 2000 grit silicon carbide paper. Then buffing. Use new buffs so you don't contaminate between the different buffing grits.

Remember you have to change directions regularly, if you keep going in the same direction you miss scratches and make ruts.

Be very careful not to overheat anything or cut yourself

Probably 40 hours of work if it's your first time. Try not to make it a smeared over washed out mess and then you'll find that, given some time and attention, Delta 3V still has pretty mediocre mirror finishing potential and can look kind of cloudy even when done perfectly.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Nothing worse than a poorly done mirror finish. Do it right and do it all the way or don't do it at all.

220 through 600 grit N grade maker stones, then 400 grit through 2000 grit silicon carbide paper. Then buffing. Use new buffs so you don't contaminate between the different buffing grits.

Remember you have to change directions regularly, if you keep going in the same direction you miss scratches and make ruts.

Be very careful not to overheat anything or cut yourself

Probably 40 hours of work if it's your first time. Try not to make it a smeared over washed out mess and then you'll find that, given some time and attention, Delta 3V still has pretty mediocre mirror finishing potential and can look kind of cloudy even when done perfectly.
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That sounds miserable.
 
I'm still debating trying this on the K20, but probably won't due to the accuracy of Nathan's first sentence. I would try to mirror the main bevel and satin the section at the tip. However, if you wash out the bevel transition it would look like shit. Stones minimize that, but only take you so far, so there would be plenty of grits of paper to go through and switching directions adds to the risk of washing out the transition.
Still, I could mess it up in way fewer than 40 hours...
 
Stones only minimize it if you’re decent at it.

3v looks its best with a clean, solid 220 grit finish. I would advise anyone doing this to:

1. Bring the blade up to a clean 600 grit, and then bring it back down to 220, and

2. reconsider doing this.
 
Richard338 said:
I'm still debating trying this on the K20, but probably won't due to the accuracy of Nathan's first sentence. I would try to mirror the main bevel and satin the section at the tip. However, if you wash out the bevel transition it would look like shit. Stones minimize that, but only take you so far, so there would be plenty of grits of paper to go through and switching directions adds to the risk of washing out the transition.
Still, I could mess it up in way fewer than 40 hours...
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You were thinking about doing a SWORD like this?

You should get a quote to have it done the traditional way. Probably less than 20 grand. You'll be time and material ahead.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
220 through 600 grit N grade maker stones, then 400 grit through 2000 grit silicon carbide paper. Then buffing. Use new buffs so you don't contaminate between the different buffing grits.
Click to expand...
Not that I want to try but I have 3m wet sand paper up to 8k grit .... wonder if that would help cut down the buff time..... or just have 0 effect at that high of grit
 
Richard338 said:
I'm still debating trying this on the K20, but probably won't due to the accuracy of Nathan's first sentence. I would try to mirror the main bevel and satin the section at the tip. However, if you wash out the bevel transition it would look like shit. Stones minimize that, but only take you so far, so there would be plenty of grits of paper to go through and switching directions adds to the risk of washing out the transition.
Still, I could mess it up in way fewer than 40 hours...
Click to expand...
Seems like there are easier ways to make yourself suffer...
 
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