need polishing advice

Z

zignal_zero

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Apr 16, 2008
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not sure if this belongs here, plz move it if there's a better place for it.

My Nimravus has been through it all and it shows. i would really like to take (what's left of) the black coating off and polish it to a good shine. i've done this before, with a United Cutlery sword, and it turned out really nice, but i was less concerned about certain things with that one. here's what i'm worried about, hopefully y'all can steer me in the right direction:

(1) i know i cannot remove the coating without removing atleast a tiny tiny bit of metal. the grinds are even, on this knife, and i really REALLY don't want to change any of the dimensions. WHAT grit sand paper should i start with, after soaking it in the aircraft stripper, to get the most amount of coating and least amount of metal off?

(2) with the sword, i used a small power sander. NOT a belt sander, a little square vibrating one. would that get the blade TOO HOT? i mean hot enough to change the temper? would it be better to do the whole thing by hand?

thank you
 
Polish by hand, unless you are planning to polish to mirror finish, but then you will need buffers and buffing compound.

I wouldn't go lower than 320 grit using emory paper. I have used 420 and 600 grit to give scratched blades a nice hand-rubbed satin finish.
 
depends on the type of coating first of all.

the stripper will only remove it if the coating is a paint type, like that on busse knives or the emerson lagriffe. if its a powder coat, i dont know what effect the stripper will have.

as far as polishing, 400 is a good place to start. if the stripper works, then start with a finer grit.

you can get a hand done mirror type finish by working your way up to 1500+ grit, a liquid metal polish, and lots of elbow grease. i always run out of patience, but ive gotten pretty close. at arm's length, it will look like a mirror finish.

try to keep your sanding strokes even and in the same direction. switch directions, perpendicular to the first series, when you change paper grits.
 
thanks, guys, the adventure begins lol. that makes alot of sense about switching direction each grit, gonna be tricky though - strokin seems so much easier the length of the blade rather than making little tiny 1" swipes across it's width. oh well, nothing good is easy.

not sure what kind of coating it is, other than POOR. i absolutely LOVE Benchmade knives. they've earned a life long customer, but i gotta be honest and say that their coatings have pushed me back to polished blades :-( i've never seen a finish get so easily taken off by kydex. hopefully that's an indication of how easy it's (intentional) removal will be.
 
The coating is probably Benchmades BT coating which is a teflon coating. I have found it to be softer than the newer DLC coatings, which go at 70 to 80 RC, and are all but impossible to remove. I would try the paint stripper to see if it will remove the coating. I once used paint stripper to remove the epoxy coat from a Becker Campanion. I ended up letting the knife soak for three days before removing the coating, but about 95% of it came off!
 
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