High polish for a 154 cm blade

[FrankDL]

I have an old 4" fixed blade fighter style knife. The original blade finish is a "satin". I have a few scratches on it, and tried buffing out the scratches with a small felt wheel with my Dremel tool using red jewelers rouge and then Semichrome. It started looking like a mirror finish. I decided to do the whole blade in a mirror finish, but it is taking me hours to make progress. Can anyone recommend a different compound that I could use before the jewelers rouge that would buff out the very fine lines in the satin finish?

All I have is the dremel tool, no big motor driven buffing wheels.


Thanks for any help.

 

[Yvsa]

:
Frank you might try some tripoli. It's a little coarser than the jeweler's rouge.
I use it when rough buffing then go to the jeweler's rouge and finally green chrome when buffing the scratches out of some of my extra large using knive's.
Be careful with the tripoli as it will take off nice grinding lines.

 

[Ron Peek]

I would suggest hand rubbing with a hard backing (piece of wood, brass bar, etc. Depending on how fine the "satin" finish is, you can start with 400,600, or 1000 grit and take it practically to a mirror finish and not round off any of the grind lines. Goes faster than you think and you don't put any dips or hollows in it. If I'm hollow grinding, I can go pretty fine on the belt grinder, but if I'm flat grinding, I always stop at 320 grit on the belt and put the final polish on by hand and then just clear up the slight haziness with the buffer.
Ron

 

[FrankDL]

Thanks Yvsa and Ron for your suggestions. I don't feel I'm in the dark anymore! You meet the nicest people on these forums!