mirror finish

M

manassas dragon

Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
158
can anybody discuss their protocol for putting a mirror finish on blades?
i'm trying to get to that point on some s35vn and am running out of elbow grease.
 
I have done a couple of mirror finishes, and all I did was hand sand up to 2500 grit, making sure to sand out all the scratches from the previous grit and kept rotating my sanding direction 90 degrees from the last grit. No dirty sanding either, where you scrub back and forth, only draw/push in the one direction. For me that is push up from the edge to the spine and draw down from the handle to the tip.

Other tips I can offer is change your paper often, treat it like it was free.
Wet sand.
Thoroughly clean between grits, so there is nothing left laying around on your work, work space, hands, or sanding paddle.
And of course don't sharpen the edge till you have everything else done because doing it earlier will mean a trip to the doctor for stitches.
 
Order in some more elbow grease, friend. You have a heckuva lotta work ahead of you if you're trying to hand-sand hardened S35VN to anything close to a mirror. It's the vanadium carbides that are making it such a pain; that's why S35VN, S30V, CPM3V etc knives are so often bead-blasted or given a machine satin finish. I don't know what kind of compounds a person would want to use, trying to buff it.

If it isn't HT'ed yet, it shouldn't be any more difficult than other steels. Assuming you or your HT guy can keep your blades air-tight during austenizing you can polish right close to your desired finish beforehand, all you'll have to do is go back to your last grit and clean off the temper colors. Then buff.
 
i have what i call a quick and easy way to put a mirror finish on a blade but its too much for me to type. i put a mirror finish on a knife i made for a member in a few hours total. i did do some work before i heat treated the edge (i only heat treat the edge of my knives, not the whole knife) which saved me some time after heat treat. if you send me an email with your number i'll give you a call and tell you how i put the mirror finish on this knife. rje196021@gmail.com http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=582180

i went from 400 grit to 600 to 1000 and finished off at 1200 before going to a buffing wheel.
 
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