I bought a couple of non-heat treated damascus blanks to finish. The blade has a hollow grind and has sanding belt marks. Prior to heat treating should I sand out these marks just like other steel (down to 400+) ? Will the damascus pattern look better or hide any improvement from sanding? should I wait until after HT? I feel like the blade should be polished now, but either before or after, what's the best way to hand sand a hollow ground blade? Thanks for your help, Michael
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polishing damascus?
- Thread starter Tune_up
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 23, 1999
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- 1,409
I've never seen what I would call an "easy" way to hand finish a hollow grind. I've seen many use fixtures that mirror the degree of the hollow, but not having tried them myself, I can't speak to how effective they are.
I generally wouldn't recommend going to more than 320 prior to heat treat...personally, I go to 120 prior to heat treat, but I tend to do a lot of my grinding "post heat treat". Even if you do decide to go to 400 prior to heat treat, it's likely that you'll have to go back to 320 after heat treat to get things cleaned up.
You'll want to go to at least 600 grit before etching the blade(s). and some folks go to as much as 1500 to 2000. One thing you DO NOT want to do is ever buff a damascus blade prior to etching. Doing so will "smear" the surface and the etch will come out looking just like that...."smeared".
I generally wouldn't recommend going to more than 320 prior to heat treat...personally, I go to 120 prior to heat treat, but I tend to do a lot of my grinding "post heat treat". Even if you do decide to go to 400 prior to heat treat, it's likely that you'll have to go back to 320 after heat treat to get things cleaned up.
You'll want to go to at least 600 grit before etching the blade(s). and some folks go to as much as 1500 to 2000. One thing you DO NOT want to do is ever buff a damascus blade prior to etching. Doing so will "smear" the surface and the etch will come out looking just like that...."smeared".
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