Mirror Polishing a Knife?

JSMcustoms

JSMcustoms

Joined
Feb 2, 2012
Messages
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A long time back I stripped the coating from my ESEE 4. Now I've gotten it into my head to polish it up. But how should one go about this? I have several different buffing compounds laying around. Could I use these and felt buffing wheels on a Dremel? Of course I'd have to kept a constant check on temp and pause a lot to keep things cool. Are there better methods?
 
Depending on how the 4 looks underneath the coating (I'm guessing its not satin under there) you've got a lot of sanding ahead of you. Before you move up a grit, you have to eliminate all of the blemishes/marks from the previous grit. So assuming its a little rough under the coating and you have to start at 100x and spend quite a bit of time and sandpaper there. Alternating directions that you sand between grit sizes will let you see when you eliminate all of the previous grit marks. Use a block, not just your fingers. Depending on how mirror-like you want the finish determines how high you have to go grit-wise. There is a lot of good information on blade finishes in shoptalk.
 
It's actually smooth under the coating. But there's like this grayish colored something. I can't say if it's another sort of coating or just the condition of the metal. And thanks for the shoptalk tip.
 
Get a two wheel bench grinder. Remove the grinding wheels and mount a sisal buff and a sewn cotton wheel and a loose cotton wheel.
Apply grey compound to the sisal wheel and green compound to the sewn wheel and pink to the loose wheel.
Mount them in order, sisal, sewn and cotton and work your blade on them. They will give you a mirror polish. DM
 
Wear good gloves, the blade will get hot.
And de-edge the knife. You can resharpen it. Last thing you want is missing digits just for a shiny knife.
 
If the blade is too hot to touch, the temper can be affected.
 
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