Thread: sisal buffing wheel, light restore

i want to remove some light pitting/rust/blemishes/ spit... light restorative work
i still want blades to look and feel old.

i want to leave satin like finish

can you use sisal wheel without compound?

will gray stick work sisal?

do i need to get / wait for grease less? and what what grit for clean up and leaving satin finish?

what compound for cotton wheel for satin finish?

i still have cotton wheel/s and anything that harbor freight stocks.

advice please

I have never had much luck with Sisal wheel except for aggressive rust removal, and for that I use a 3m Scotch Brite Rotary 220 radial wheel, not a Scorch Brite woven pad wheel. It will leave a rough satin finish, but is aggressive, not as aggressive as a wire wheel.

600 greaseless on a cotton wheel is the best for cleanup. You can get a nice finish depending on the aggressiveness of the greaseless. I keep 3, 600 grit wheels going all the time in various degrees of grit aggressiveness and rotate them as they wear. Each will give its own level of polish.

But for real satin finish you must buff to high gloss and hand finish down, in one direction, to satin with clean 600 paper. There are many good videos of knife guys going spectacular satin knife finishes. Nick Wheeler has some great videos, well worth watching with great video and instruction.

I get a great satin finish from a specific emery compound on a sisal wheel . Different makes of compounds have different effects. There are also Satin wheels to produce uniform scratches.
To remove pitting though I would say greaseless.

It is like anything , you have to test test and then test some more

Yes, compounds do make a difference, they are not all alike. I had a stick of Green chrome greased compound that I had for years. It gave the best finish and was aggressive. It finally ran out and I don’t remember where I got it from. I reordered from Castwell’s where I buy most of my polishing supplies and the new stick is not the same, I have tried a couple others but not the same performance.

I have never had luck with the cheaper HF and other suppliers with wheels and compounds. Knife supply’s, Castwell’s and Brownells sell the better compounds and wheels, the price difference is not that much. Once you find ones you like buy the big sicks for value, depending on how much buffing you do.

The cheaper wheels get stringy and wear faster. The strings slap and mar the work, making a good consistent finish harder to achieve. I trim my wheels with sharp dollar store garden shears. The compound will trash a good pair of scissors. I trim them when the strings get longer than a ¼ in. You can sharpen the cheap shears a couple times with a diamond file, then replace them. I buy 3-4 at a time.

Buy a good rake and clean it often with WD40.

For razors I hand sand then go to the buffer, from 600, polish to a mirror then hand sand with a 3x3 in piece of good 600 paper wrapped around a clean synthetic wine cork. Roll the cork as you make a down, (one directional ) stroke on the blade, so you are cutting with a clean/new piece of paper with each stroke. Use the piece of paper only once for a satin finish. You can turn the paper 4 times for each side and flip the paper for each side, so you get 8 swipes with each piece with new grit.

As you roll and down stroke you will use about ¾ to 1 inch of paper, using a new section each time, 3 times with a 3 inch piece of paper. Seems wasteful but really but you get 3-4 swipes per side times 2 (flip the paper), times 4 sides, 24-32 swipes of fresh, new grit. You can finish a razor with one piece easily.

This is just the final satin finish, you can use the same piece of paper for regular hand sanding, it still has life left, but for the best finial finish use only new fresh grit.

Here is an old post I made about cutting your sandpaper and making pads by gluing one end to keep track of your paper. (Sandpaper Note Pads)
It is the most efficient use of sand paper. Buy good sandpaper for quality finish, change it once it stops cutting.

Be careful buffing with aggressive compounds, it is easy to round and wash out all the detail and crisp lines with a buffer. Sometimes hand sanding is the only way.