Buying Rouge

M

Michaelbikel

Joined
Nov 3, 2016
Messages
15
Stopped at a tag sale today and they happened to have a couple tubes of rouge in the garage. I know the guy that used to live there had an old fire truck so I am thinking he used it on the chrome bumper? Anyway, I stupidly didn't open it to check if it was dried out and it seemed like the top 1/3rd was dry. Is there a way to re-hydrate it, could I simply mix it with a liquid? I've never even used or bought it before but now that I am getting into blanking I thought it may come in handy, and at $1 I won't be crying over it. So is this stuff supposed to be more like a paste, because right now its about the consistency of a crayon...
 
Depends on what you get. Some comes in a paste some comes as a crayon. I doubt a paste would dry up and be like a crayon.

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I can't find the reference, so this is coming from my bad memory and therefore not worth much...
Anyways, apparently you can take a dried-up compound in a wax bar, cut some away, and mix with a little bit of mineral oil. Then you can apply to your strop.
If I were you, I'd give that a shot with a small bit of rouge, a drop of mineral oil, and try on paper, so that you don't ruin all your stuff.
 
So I tried applying it to a buffing wheel last night and it didn't seem to do much. Sections of the wheel that I applied rouge from the top side of the bar tended not to take any of the material at all. One or two sections of the wheel turned red when I applied from the bottom and middle of the bar but still seemed a bit dry. I will try the mineral oil trick or perhaps cutting the most dry section of rouge off and applying mild heat and oil.
 
What metals will you be buffing with the red rouge? If it includes knife blades of hardened steel, you may not have much success with it anyway, as there are more effective compounds made for hard metals (like chrome) and steel. Red rouge is a bit soft for such hard metals, and is usually better utilized on softer materials like brass, nickel, etc.


David
 
Red rouge is practically useless for stropping knives.
There might be a slight improvement in sharpness just because the wire edge was flexed back and forth until it broke off, but that could have been accomplished on the palm of your hand!

Try Rick's White Lightnin'. Google it.
 
Mr. Chips said:
Red rouge is practically useless for stropping knives.
There might be a slight improvement in sharpness just because the wire edge was flexed back and forth until it broke off, but that could have been accomplished on the palm of your hand!

Try Rick's White Lightnin'. Google it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply guys, i saw it and it said a buck so I bought it. Never used rouge and obviously I know nothing about it but now I am learning. I have some practice jewelry I can use it on as I see now that it is "jewelers rouge".
 
Red rouge works very well on high carbon steel. It's what was used to polish blades before chrome rouges.
 
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