question about 1095 carbon steel

Getting it to shine like a mirror is easy. Keeping it looking like that is a steady job. Most of my kitchen knives are 1095 polished, blued and then I knock just a little of the blue off with a Scotchbrite pad. It looks like Grandma's old knife. If this is for a field use knife I wouldn't bother polishing it too much. It will become scratched up pretty quickly.
 
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I am a used to spend a lot of time polishing gun parts. I think the best way is with wet or dry sandpaper. Start with 220- 300 grit and work your way through 400 600 1000 1500 2000. Get them at an auto body parts/supplies dealer. There's one in every town. I use some thick leather scraps to back the paper with. Sand one direction and then sand 90 degrees to that and then switch again. Just keep cutting the steel and watch the lines go away. You could do it on a buffing wheel but you would have to keep it cooled constantly. 1500 is as far as I usually go. Flitz will work fine once you get it pretty smooth with sandpaper.
 
iiwelshii said:
Can this be accomplished with flitz and elbow grease? If so what cloth is best to apply flitz?
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It is possible, but would take many years of daily hand polishing with flitz to do that. Flitz is a fairly soft abrasive, and doesn't cut steel so much as it pushes down the high spots a bit. It's hard enough to cut brass, and you can go from rough to mirror on brass in a day.
 
iiwelshii said:
By hand, how many hours would it take to accomplish on a Izula?
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With flitz? Depends on the hand. And the muscle in it. And the position of the moon and the sun...

My advice? Try the flitz. You'll probably give up pretty quickly, but it shouldn't hurt anything. Just don't rub one tiny spot until it's a stunning speck. Do that and you'll have a cool knife with one stunning speck on it. :o
 
You didn't clarify your question enough to give a good answer, with sandpaper moving up the various grits your looking at a good 2 to 3 days of work. In hours probably 15 to 20 depending on how determined you are.
 
iiwelshii said:
By hand, how many hours would it take to accomplish on a Izula?
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If it's coated, by all means use stripper to get most of it off, or you'll use up a lot of elbow grease and sandpaper.

On hardened 1095/O1/1084 etc I can get from 100 or 220 to a fine 2000 grit polish in a couple hours on a 4" blade. Water or windex will help the paper cut better and last longer. Light oil (I use Mobil1) on the last couple steps will help polish and reduce "fishhooks". Clamp the blade down firmly and use a firm solid backing for your sandpaper, or your just wasting energy.

The first couple steps are the most important. If you're not straight and even at 100 or 220, you could spend the rest of the year trying to polish out random scratches with 400 or higher. Once you get 'er nice and clean at 400, subsequent steps go very quickly.
 
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