Flitz Question

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Will Flitz polish out some light pepper spots on a GEC (1095) blade?
 
ddallam said:
Will Flitz polish out some light pepper spots on a GEC (1095) blade?
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If you are patient enough and just keep rubbing it will lessen or remove the pepper spots, but don’t be surprised if the spot comes back after a few weeks. Once a spot starts if seems to reoccur. Also, if the blade had a satin finished blade now it will be polished in the area the Flitz was used.
 
I have only had green. Didnt know blue was a thing but the green works really well.
 
How does Never Dull polishing wads compare to Flitz?
I've never tried Flitz but have used Never Dull on blades, guns, knives, brass, Bronze, copper ... I know it works and is non-abrasive.
 
I wonder how Flitz works if it is non-abrasive? I thought all polishing paste have a microscopic abrasive parts.
 
Alex.Y. said:
I wonder how Flitz works if it is non-abrasive? I thought all polishing paste have a microscopic abrasive parts.
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Chemical Reactions?
I know that's how Never Dull works, and they say it is safe for gold and silver, as well as brass, German Silver, pewter, copper, aluminum, and bronze.
I remember grandma used it to keep her silver tea service set and gold plated flatware shinny.
 
ddallam said:
Will Flitz polish out some light pepper spots on a GEC (1095) blade?
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It will lessen their appearance and make them completely smooth to the touch, but the spots will remain. This thread actually prompted me to pick some up to try the same thing. I think mechanical buffing at least would be necessary to really get rid of them.
afishhunter said:
Chemical Reactions?
I know that's how Never Dull works, and they say it is safe for gold and silver, as well as brass, German Silver, pewter, copper, aluminum, and bronze.
I remember grandma used it to keep her silver tea service set and gold plated flatware shinny.
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Ammonia and ammonium hydroxide apparently.
 
Any of these polishing products wouldn't work at all if they were truly non-abrasive. They'd be more accurately described as 'less abrasive' or 'gently abrasive'. And some vendors, to their credit, do describe the Flitz products (either green or blue) as 'mildly abrasive'. To polish any material in the true sense, some of the material must be removed at a microscopically small scale to reduce the depth of surface scratches, which is what 'polishing' is. That means abrasion has to happen, and it's what produces the black stuff (swarf) on the rags in doing so. And many of these products, in their own instructions, warn they should NOT be used on plated metals - because the extremely thin plating will be stripped away. Can't do that without abrasion.

An easy way to test the product's abrasive capabilities is to refine your blade's edge on a strop of paper with some of the Flitz applied. The dark trails left on the paper will indicate the metal being removed by abrasion from the polishing compound's fine grit. If you tried the same on a bare sheet of paper with no polish applied, you'd see no dark trails left at all. By the same means, it'll be easy to dull an edge on a strop with the polishing compound appled, if the substrate is too soft or if the angle held is too high, or pressure against the soft substrate is too heavy.
 
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^yes. In addition to the purposes mentioned, some will apply a little to a leather strop. The one time I didn't like what happened was trying to lightly polish a hamon. The already highly polished surface turned cloudy.
 
I get that people here like to analyze every tiny detail... I just think some are over-thinking it.
If you're Flizing the actual cutting edge, maybe it will get dull... but I don't think you should actually be Flitzing the cutting edge.
 
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JohnDF said:
I still don't see how polishing a blade with Flitz and a cloth will dull an edge.
If the edge is that fragile, I'd hate to actually use the knife to cut anything.
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It’s the same as running the blade over stropping compound. If cardboard can dull a knife, diamond pastes and emulsions certainly can! One swipe on the flitz will tear out all your carbides in your edge but it can take some out I’m sure
 
JohnDF said:
I still don't see how polishing a blade with Flitz and a cloth will dull an edge.
If the edge is that fragile, I'd hate to actually use the knife to cut anything.
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Let'er Buck said:
It’s the same as running the blade over stropping compound. If cardboard can dull a knife, diamond pastes and emulsions certainly can! One swipe on the flitz will tear out all your carbides in your edge but it can take some out I’m sure
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I know I've sure stropped on green rouge at too high an angle and very significantly dulled a blade in a couple of swipes.
 
Also a strop with green can remove pepper spots I've found, but not to be used in the vicinity of etches.
 
Let'er Buck said:
If cardboard can dull a knife, diamond pastes and emulsions certainly can!
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But we aren't talking about stropping, we are talking about running a cloth along the flat of the blade... I think this all falls under the category of overthinking stuff.
 
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In looking around the web for information about differences between the Blue Flitz (paste) and the Green Flitz (liquid), I did find an SDS (Safety Data Sheet) for each of them. For the blue Flitz, the 'abrasive minerals' content is listed to be aluminum oxide (Al2O3). For the green product, its SDS shows 'cristobalite' as the mineral - that's a silica-based (SiO2) mineral with a unique crystal structure as compared to other silica-based minerals. The aluminum oxide would likely be more aggressive on hard metals, with a Knoop hardness around ~ 2100 or so. A silica-based abrasive likely wouldn't be much harder than about Knoop 800-ish or so - compare to the novaculite in Arkansas stones @ ~825 Knoop - which is about as hard as silica gets in any form.

So, if that's the case, then the 'green' product would likely be less aggressive and better suited for softer materials, including softer metals like brass or gold/silver, etc. Whereas the 'blue' product would work better with hard metals, like stainless steels. I've used the Flitz paste (blue) on strops, and it does work reasonably well in that application. I've never knowingly used the so-called 'green' Flitz. I did try a Flitz product in a liquid form, years ago. It wasn't labelled as 'green', nor was it green in color (it was sort of off-white). I did get the impression it wasn't nearly as aggressive for use on knives' blades though, as compared to the blue paste Flitz product (the paste IS actually light blue in color).
 
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