metal polish question

i was hoping for some insight, just picked up a boker "king cutter" and needs to be cleaned up, my question is the blade has some etching, and i'm wondering if metal polish will effect said etch or is there a better way of doing it,

If it's en engraving you're fine. If it's an etching like for example a gold wash rubbing anything over the wash will make it fade. Some wash will rub off instantaneously while others might slowly fade. There is no miracle compound or polish that will preserve the wash while at the same time trying to clean the blade. Now if the wash is already gone due to age etc..and you're left with the cut-out of the acid used to make the etching then you can clean with your polish. Using a tumbler would also be another option in that case.

thanks max, I guess i miss spoke it would be a wash, but you answered my question anyhow, thanks again. It is very faded and not sure if worth saving or possible to, also don't think i'm to worried about saving it. thnaks for the info

Here's mine that is gold wash:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robhawk...7623909000293/

This did not survive even a single wipe of Maas metal polish which I did before hand sanding to clean the blade to see what I had to deal with.

I tried the suggestion of one person on the board to mask the gold wash off with electrical tape, but it was very difficult to do, and I could tell right away after trying it that all you would end up with is a nice clean blade all around the wash and then weird old stained metal / gold wash where you masked and it just didn't look good. So in the end away the wash went.

mine is very similar to that, razor, excpet all that is left of the wash is pretty well just the out line, thanks for the info guys! so the fact of the matter is if i want to clean it up, the wash will be lost, and i'm ok with that.

I think that's the part Max was talking about with the leftovers of the acid. On mine that part was pretty resilient to all of the polishing I did. I didn't need to sand in that area, but I'm sure it wouldn't hold up to any sanding. I polished with Maas usiing a dremel at low speed and it survived that no problem.

the only thing left it to try it and see what happens, and hope it stays, if not oh well.