Mora 223 Horrible to Mirror Polish.

Knife Crazied

Knife Crazied

Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
5,168
When I received the Mora 223 I was quite surprised to see it wasn't polished. It was horrible looking to be honest. I thought about it and decided to just use it as it was since it was a knife I planned to beat the tar out of. I used it once but kept thinking how good it would look polished. I had never done a polish before so I watched a video on youtube and went at it. The results can be seen below. I think I did a damn good job! If you look close at last photo you can see the wood reflecting.

I went 220, 400, 600, 1500 and finished with a wonderful wax by renaissance. The wax is way better then flitz IMO.

MODS IF YOU THINK THIS DOESN'T BELONG PLEASE MOVE IT. ASH

Before

North-20120425-00340.jpg


After

North-20120425-00341.jpg


1001207f.jpg


1001210s.jpg
 
Ash, in the first photo it looks almost like a blued blade, or is that an effect of the light in the picture?

Good job of polishing! How long did it take until you were happy with the finish?

Carl.
 
It was the heat treat and left like that. I put about 6 hours into each side. I did it all by hand. I think I did pretty good for a first try.

Sent from Ash forum mobile
 
Well done Ash, whew... 6 hours per side.... have you broken you leg or something that you can sit down and take on a job like that!!
 
Hey there Ash...please forgive my cheekiness...I know what you mean as I too have sat down ( for probably collectively days) usually when at the end of the day-taking in a bit of tv and worked knives.
What a success story though!....I think you did well
 
Looked like a crappy beater knife before the mirror polish. Such a simple thing makes it look a million times better.
 
It is almost the biggest knife Mora makes. The only bigger one I know of is the 333 machete.

Sent from Ash forum mobile
 
You did a good work there, Ash! :) Took a long time to finish the polishing, I like that.

Kind regards
Andi
 
I don't want to get to off topic here, but how is that blade for chopping? I've been wanting a cheap, big, machete-like fixed blade to keep under the back seat of my truck for clearing brush for shooting lanes and whatnot. Would this fit the bill?
 
Great job Ash. Looks really really nice. What polishing stroke did you use -- handle to tip/tip to handle; edge to spine; circular; or a combination of all of those.
 
Yea its a nice knife and batons like a champ at $18 plus shipping its a steal.

I went handle to tip/tip to handle Ed. Just back and forth as the grind was edge to spine and I was told to sand opposite to the original grind.

Sent from Ash forum mobile
 
I've found the same thing to be true with Opinels. Here's a #10 that I recently spiffed up using the same basic technique: 320, 600, 1000, 2000, rubbing compound, polishing compound.

I go tip to tail with the 320 until the spine/edge grind marks are gone. I then go tip/tail and then spine/edge with each successive grit. That's how I learned to do it with restoring bike parts. The 2 passes of each grit should entirely remove the marks of the preceding one.


opinel #10 by Pinnah, on Flickr

I was reading through Paul Sellers' book on wood working and he notes that its common for woodworking tools to come with blade that have grind marks in them that need to be polished out for the best cutting performance. And somebody on this forum encouraged me to tweak Opinels with the understanding that a stock Opinel is a starting point, not a destination. You really need to invest some time tuning and tweaking to bring them to life.

Sounds like your Mora is similar in that regard.
 
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