Polish work

O

Ore_Ele

Joined
Feb 10, 2012
Messages
341
So what is the best way to get a dang shiny polish on your knives? To make them look like an SS (like the 1660SS90 or the 1600SS) or as close as possible. If you are going to laser etch the knife, should you polish it up first, or after?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
 
I prefer a liquid polishing compound and a felt bob on a variable speed Dremel. If the metal has some kind of fine texture on it like kershaw's bead blast, I would probably recommend leveling the finish with some light sanding first. And, I would definitely laser etch AFTER any polishing, just to ensure that the etch is not diminished in any way.

I polished up a Zing tanto right over the top of the factory beadblast finish without any prep, just started right with the liquid compound, and got a pretty good mirror, although on very close inspection you can see that it is not perfectly smooth. I did a kind of two-tone thing where I left the flats beadblasted and only polished the hollow grind area, might not be appealing to everyone, but here's a kind of basic picture of how it turned out:

2q8bpy9.jpg
 
IRZ28 said:
I prefer a liquid polishing compound and a felt bob on a variable speed Dremel. If the metal has some kind of fine texture on it like kershaw's bead blast, I would probably recommend leveling the finish with some light sanding first. And, I would definitely laser etch AFTER any polishing, just to ensure that the etch is not diminished in any way.

I polished up a Zing tanto right over the top of the factory beadblast finish without any prep, just started right with the liquid compound, and got a pretty good mirror, although on very close inspection you can see that it is not perfectly smooth. I did a kind of two-tone thing where I left the flats beadblasted and only polished the hollow grind area, might not be appealing to everyone, but here's a kind of basic picture of how it turned out:

2q8bpy9.jpg
Click to expand...
That looks great! I really like the contrast.
 
I like the contrast too! That's amazing. What type of compound did you use for that? I use Brasso to take off the small rust spots that I get on my knives, but I've never had that kind of effect. Any tips?
 
Thanks guys. The polish I used was some pretty expensive stuff that I had gotten for the wheels on my car called English Custom Polish. Honestly though, I would be surprised if you couldn't get similar results from other compounds.

I think the key was the use of the Dremel. I did do the very final finishing pass by hand, but the Dremel (or other rotary tool, even a drill would probably work) is definitely the way to go for the initial polishing. It does need to be a variable speed model though, because if the RPM is to high it will spin off all of the compound. I made my single speed Dremel into a variable by simply wiring it up to a household dimmer switch.

Oh, and to get the hard transition line from the polished to the bead blast finish I just used masking tape, carefully trimmed, and made sure to stick it down very well. In retrospect, though, I think it might actually look better with a gradual transition...
 
Thank you guys very much, I'll have to get a picture up of the final result, though may be a few weeks.
 
IRZ28 said:
I polished up a Zing tanto right over the top of the factory beadblast finish without any prep, just started right with the liquid compound, and got a pretty good mirror, although on very close inspection you can see that it is not perfectly smooth. I did a kind of two-tone thing where I left the flats beadblasted and only polished the hollow grind area, might not be appealing to everyone, but here's a kind of basic picture of how it turned out:

2q8bpy9.jpg
Click to expand...


Very nice. I did the same with a RAM.

p20120120-204514-1.jpg
 
I'll get pics of the blade as soon as it is done (will only be the polish, not the etching). I'll be doing it tomorrow evening, so hoping all goes well (was told by someone at Kershaw to be careful to not chip the blade, so now I'm nervous).
 
If you're that worried about chipping the blade with the Dremel, try some wet/dry sandpaper: start with 600 grit and work up to 2500 to finish, then polish by hand with liquid or paste compound.....it'll get you what you're after.
 
Started with 220 then 400, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit paper then finished it off with some metal polish from Auto Zone using a dremel.
 
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