What compound have you Kydex pros use for the first phase of finishing? Tripoli? I am not an expert on all the compounds and I really cant find anything specific to Kydex. What I want to do is after the belt sanding, I want to smooth out the markings and give it a nice smooth finish. I am not worried about the polishing, I can do that. I just seem to have problems choosing a good compound for getting rid of the sand marks. I end up burning or not doing much smoothing. A while back I found a good combo and was able to smooth and polish a small sheath within a few minutes. Now it takes me forever, if I dont burn it first.
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Buffing Kydex Edge
- Thread starter rapaport
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2001
- Messages
- 14,955
I think that only works for leather.
Tripoli works fine, just keep adding it and make sure you clean off of the sheath well.
Some makers have also tried acetone with great results.
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2009
- Messages
- 722
Get yourself a small felt wheel, around 1.5" diameter. There is a seller on ebay thats got everything you'd need. Set it up in a mandrel (aka arbor), and chuck it up into a drill press and run it at 1600-1700rpm. Squirt some mineral oil into the felt, and then load it up with black compound. If you really want to get fancy, you can gouge a groove in the felt with a wood lathe tool. If you get your spacing right, this will bevel both sides, and polish the edge. You'll be surprised at how fast and easy it is once you get it setup.
I use this for all of my kydex parts(these are single layer pieces for structural components, not two pieces sandwiched together like for a sheath), and it gave them all a nice smooth beveled edge. Last run of parts I did ended up being around 150 pieces or so, all on the felt wheel. Controlling the speed with this is key. I've got a 6" wheel on my buffer and at 3600rpm, it just melted the kydex. You need to run it at half that speed.
I use this for all of my kydex parts(these are single layer pieces for structural components, not two pieces sandwiched together like for a sheath), and it gave them all a nice smooth beveled edge. Last run of parts I did ended up being around 150 pieces or so, all on the felt wheel. Controlling the speed with this is key. I've got a 6" wheel on my buffer and at 3600rpm, it just melted the kydex. You need to run it at half that speed.
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