Benchmade Anthem polished to a satin finish

[BloodyDonnie]

So two weeks ago I bought an Anthem. Didnt like it at first, started a thread listing the various reasons. Sold it within a few days, but decided to buy it again and give it a second chance.

Part of the reason I was willing to give it a second chance was because I think it would look really good if the blade was polished to a satin or mirror finish. The stonewash finish was one of the things I originally didnt like about it.

So, after buying the Anthem again, I watched a bunch of polishing videos on youtube, and got a rotary tool and some polishing compound. I first started with polishing the thumb stud and axis lock. It came out really great.

2 nights ago, I started to polish the blade.

I originally wanted to reach a mirror polish, but idk if I was doing it incorrectly; it took FOREVER. I could tell it was progressing but progressing REALLY SLOW.

I had a test run beforehand on a cheap $4 stainless steel kitchen knife. Literally took just 10 passes; just 10 minutes or so to get a shiny close to mirror finish.

So I thought the Anthem blade was gonna be a breeze. I was so wrong.

I knew that the 20CV on the Anthem blade would be obviously harder to polish than the $4 kitchen knife. But I never would have guessed the reality of just how much harder and longer it took.

What you see in the picture took me close to 10 hours total throughout these past 2 nights and this morning.

Anyways, I reached this point of like a satin/semi polished finish, and I am very satisfied with it, so I stopped at this point. I kept the stonewash finish on the flat plane above the hollow grind to give it some contrast, and it turned out really nicely.

Overall, really happy with how it turned out. But probably not going to do anything like this again haha

 

[morph2k4]

Yikes, did you do steps of different grits or did you just continuously hit it with a fine grit? I suspect this might have taken so long because you were using a fine grit paper/compound the whole way.

 

[BloodyDonnie]

Yikes, did you do steps of different grits or did you just continuously hit it with a fine grit? I suspect this might have taken so long because you were using a fine grit paper/compound the whole way.

Yea I'm an idiot lol since the guy on youtube just started with the wool felt pad on the rotary tool, I tried to use that from start to finish instead of gradually increasing grit.

It was partly also because I did the exact same thing on a $4 stainless kitchen knife as a test and got it to a near mirror polish within like 15 min only using the wool felt pad lol