Dealing with gold coming off

Many razors have gold on them, which of course always comes off over time. I was dealing with this issue the other day and made some discoveries that may be helpful to others. The razor I was working on had gold areas that looked good and I didn't want to mess those up.

I was able to to remove gold only from the places desired, including in tight spaces and close quarters with gold I wanted to stay.

I used painters non-stick masking tape - the kind that is meant to be removed, which worked very well to protect the gold I wanted to stay. I would have concern about this tape removing gold, even though the glue is weak on blades where you can see that the gold is in tough shape. Options there would be to cover the fragile areas with paper and then tape over it.

I didn't a post-it, though suspect it would work as well.

Here are a few things I learned:

1. Don't use a full size buffing wheel in the tight areas. Use a Dremel with a buffing wheel on it at low speed.
2. Make very sure that the buffing wheel is going in the correct direction to keep the tape down. I had done an almost perfect job and the buffing wheel moved the tape just a little, thus causing myself much more work.
3. Make sure the Dremel is on a slow speed. Mistakes happen much faster as the RPM increases.
4. I'm using the various colored solid bar polishing compounds for the most part these days. Mother's is good when there are no rough spots left. 3M Marine does have an abrasive, though it is very, very fine.
5. I recently purchased some 1.5 inch and 2 inch buffing wheels from the same company that sells the bigger ones. This is adding much versatility to my Dremel. This post is about working on metal, though the tight knit wool wheels common for Dremels will burn horn, micarta and other materials.

The slowest speed on my Dremel is 5000 rpm. I don't think any of the buffing compounds are intended for use over 3000 rpm. The really loose buffing wheels I refered to allow me to use the Dremel VERY CAREFULLY on horn, etc...