I have done a lot of diamond paste polishing on very hard steel. What I use is a hard homemade feldt pad in my drill press. I had some Dremel brushes and some 1" width 3/8 thickness feldt. Actually, the pieces of feldt were ink pads that I cut rough circles out of, 1" circles. Then I hot glued the pads to the flat of the brush and chucked the whole works in my drill press. One very important thing to do is mask off the drill press table surface because the table will scratch your blade. I use lengths of masking tape butted together to cover the table top. Adjust your table to within about a half inch or so of the chucked pad while your chuck is in the raised position. You may be more comfortable doing it in a drill press vise, But I do it free hand. Adjust your table so that the edge of the table is about a half inch from the pad when it is lowered onto the table. Smear a bit of paste on the blade and lower the pad onto the blade, starting right up by the guard. Let's imagine your blade is 1" wide at the guard. Apply downward pressure, just a couple of pounds pressure at most. You don't need a lot of pressure, the diamonds will cut like crazy. Do about a an inch of swirl at a time, for about 6 to 10 seconds, LIGHT pressure, but steady pressure. Raise the pad to clear the blade, and then move the blade about 1/2 or 3/4 of a 1" swirl, and repeat, traveling the lenght of the blade. Then, do another row, overlapping the 1" swirls. After the blade is covered with polished swirls, lower the pad again and hold constant pressure. Then, move the blade in a constant motion, essentially doing an equal overall buff with the pad. You will have to apply more paste as needed, but it won't take much. The paste's use can be extended by using a minute amount of oil if the slurry gets too thick to be effective. You will quickly develop a feel for the pad and the blade. Use caution when near the sharp knife blade edge, of course. Work toward the sharp edge and have the direction of the pad traveling off the sharp edge, not toward the edge, if this makes sense. Your pad will be spinning off the main part of the blade and off and away from the edge, NOT TOWARDS THE SHARP EDGE. BY using hand pressure and not locking the chuck down you have more control. Go easy until you have a good feel of what you are doing. It's actually easier to do than you imagine. When I started making knives I was using power hacksaw blades and puting mirror polishes on the blades. I found it impossible to do a mirror polish on those blades by using any other method with the equipment I had. The first couple I polished with diamond paste and a single speed Dremel tool You can imagine the mess, but it did the job. You wear most of the slung off black gunk when using the Demel method.
