what is the best diamond paste\spray?

T

TigFur

Joined
Oct 25, 2016
Messages
125
Hi.
You have read the title, didn't you...

i tried cheap Chinese pastes and I liked the results, however some deeper scratches always appeared in the 0,25 micron finish...

I saw there are 0,025 micron sprays available, that's awesome! But 70$ for a single gritt and I would need at least three to make a use of it... Is there and cheaper way to get them?

Also -What kind of material should I use them on, I can imagine it has to be very smooth. I saw paper vlizeline special leathers or expensive Nano cloths?

Thanks for your answers
 
More often than not, deeper scratches showing up during micro-polishing are the leftover scratches from earlier, coarser-grit sharpening steps. It happens a LOT, as it really takes a determined effort to completely remove coarser scratches from earlier steps at each successive step. It also requires pretty narrow transitions in grit changes, as a too-big leap in reducing grit size during the sequence will make it difficult for much-finer polishing grits to remove the heavier-grit scratches preceding. Polishing the surrounding steel really makes heavy scratches stand out, which is why it often seems like the coarse scratches resulted from the polishing when, most of the time, they were already there, but not as easily seen amongst the still less-than-polished finish.

And at sub-micron polishing steps, it's also real easy to get scratches from a less-than-perfectly clean stropping substrate under the compound, or from cross-contamination via earlier sharpening/stropping steps at coarser grit.

I'm not discounting the possibility that you can find higher-quality compounds than what you're now using. But, the issue with heavy scratches showing up during polishing can almost always be traced back to incomplete scratch pattern replacement during earlier sharpening steps.


David
 
i have experimented enough to know they arent caused by contamination or gritt progression at all in this case.
at 0,5 micron paste the edge is shiny and clean and at 0,25 a few scratches appear which are deeper than a 1,5 compound can get out, i tried different leather substrates, mdf and paper and made sure i did not contaminate them a single time, i did not touch the strop are and i did not let it touch anything. The result was always the same. I do admit the 0,5 paste also does it a little. Well it cost a few dollars so i think i can conclude it was impurities in the paste itself.

anyway the submicron sprays are so expwnsive and id only make one or two strops with it, cant one get them in smaller doses and more gritts?
 
TigFur said:
i have experimented enough to know they arent caused by contamination or gritt progression at all in this case.
at 0,5 micron paste the edge is shiny and clean and at 0,25 a few scratches appear which are deeper than a 1,5 compound can get out, i tried different leather substrates, mdf and paper and made sure i did not contaminate them a single time, i did not touch the strop are and i did not let it touch anything. The result was always the same. I do admit the 0,5 paste also does it a little. Well it cost a few dollars so i think i can conclude it was impurities in the paste itself.

anyway the submicron sprays are so expwnsive and id only make one or two strops with it, cant one get them in smaller doses and more gritts?
Click to expand...

The bolded/underlined part is a clue about what's needed to fix it, and emphasizes the importance of fully executing the coarser steps. If a 1.5 micron compound can't remove the scratches, going back to 3 micron or maybe even 6 micron should handle it better. In that regard, and in suggesting a better quality compound in general, DMT's 3µ paste is a very good polisher in particular. Use it on firm wood for best results, then follow that with DMT 1 micron. I've liked using basswood with it, in part just because it's readily available in convenient sizes at hobby/craft stores; but it also performs well with the compound.

A caution on using MDF - it can also be somewhat 'dirty' as a result of it's manufacture; it's made of ground up wood particles/dust, likely with dirt & who knows what else, bound in resin. It's also known in woodworking circles to be abrasive itself, generating extra wear on the tooling used to cut & shape it. Might be an issue there, at very small grit polishing stages, with scratches of unknown origin in the finish. It does work very well with somewhat larger-grit compound though.


David
 
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I found clay-coated paper (for printing photo) worked very well as backing for 100 & 250nm diamond/cbn abrasive. It has extremely fine (nano) upward/opposite pressure against blade, which actually reduces abrade channeling especially when stropped through grit sequence with same/aligned stroke direction. Even with photopaper, I would strop with cross-hatch pattern - easy to spot scratch lines coarser/deeper than 50% of current grit.

'Channeling' is more/less 10% scenario, whereas David/OwE pointed out the 80%, leaving 10% to ?
 
I've found regular copy paper to have some sort of contamination embedded and it won't work for a true mirror polish... Not sure if this applies to different types or only the one I was using
 
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