polishing knives?

D

darkinertia

Joined
Nov 7, 2006
Messages
28
so i have a few knives i bought used recently and some new ones i have that ive been wanting to polish up, the used ones have a lot of discoloration and a couple of my knives also have nicks and scratches from sharpening, which drives me crazy for some reason lol. ive also been wanting to polish up my spartan , which is beadblasted, to a mirror finish to give it more of an aggressive look.

my question is, how do you polish up a knife to near mirror finish? and what should i use to achieve this?

and for minor scratches and surface rust, is there some sort of compound or something that i can use? i heard about flitz or something like that but its made for guns, and i wasnt sure if it should be used on knives too or if it would actually work like that.

im thinking i may need to get something like a dremel and some tools like that, but im not too sure...what works best for you guys?

thanks everyone
 
Don't use a dremel, in short it will not end well.

Also be aware a polished blade is like a black car, they both require lots of constant care.

The spartan would be fairly easy using a power buffer and a fine compound. Others would require lots of sanding before buffing.
 
Hey knifenut1013, how's your sharpening mid-life crisis going? Also, what was that new stone you recommended to me that one time? I wanna say it starts with a K.

darkintertia, polishing to a mirror finish on a knife looks great, but in the long run I've given up trying to maintain them on my user knives. Every little scratch and fingerprint shows up very easily on a polished knife. If you want to try a satin finish, that's much easier to do. Take some 400 grit sandpaper and sand down the whole side of the knife only going in one direction (you can go back and forth, but always same direction). This will leave what's known as a satin finish. Looking at the steel closely it will have little scratches in it, but it's easy to maintain and in my opinion looks pretty good.

If you are talking about just the primary cutting edge of the knife, this is much much easier to do, and I do it consistently with all of my knives that I sharpen at home. I obtain this using a couple of different grits of japanese water stone, ending with a 6000 grit stone, and then I finish them on a leather strop with polishing compound.

JGON
 
JGON, good lol, buying more stones has helped. Its a kitayama.

You can also do satin finishes with scotch brite, better look than sandpaper IMO.
 
I use a bench grinder with sewn muslin wheels, treated with .5 micron CrO.

But use EXTREME care with these machines.

Buffers and grinders are quite dangerous if used carelessly or improperly
 
 
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