Final finishing/polishing

[turbojet61]

I'm looking for help with the final finishing stages for a knife. My procedure now is to work down from a course grit to a 1200 and then on to the buffer, first with a general cleaning compound and then a polishing one. Try as I might, I never seem to be able to completely get rid of all of the little machining marks. Thoughts/suggestions? Also, is there a good buffing compound that's safe to use on wood without discoloring it? Any help much appreciated.

 

[Bastid]

Hello and welcome to Blade Forums.

I am going to move this to the Shop Talk Forum feeling that the great folks there will help out and know from experience.

 

[Grayzer86]

My initial guess would be that you are not getting out the previous scratches from the lower grit. Sand each grit at an angle to the last and do not move to a higher grit until absolutely no scratches are left from the last grit. I also go up to 2000 grit on my own polished blades.

 

[John Katt]

With a little magnification and good light you can clearly see the lower grit scratches, nothing worse then getting to 220grit only to see a few pesky 80grit scratches, that should have been removed with 120grit

also if your using a belt sander you need to be careful of cross contamination of grit, i always blow my belts off with compress air after switching grits

 

[flatblackcapo]

Here are a couple of videos from Nick Wheeler that have some really good info/tips. Thanks Nick for the videos.
[video=youtube_share;u-x4wj8WC8U]http://youtu.be/u-x4wj8WC8U[/video]
[video=youtube_share;QguLGtn4eIM]http://youtu.be/QguLGtn4eIM[/video]