Thread: finishing touches: buffing & polishing

Hello all,

I've been working on my first couple of razor restores and I need some advice.
I followed the "hand sanding a blade" article from the wiki and now I'm at the point where I need to buff or polish the razor. I tried to hand buff using Mother's billet metal polish and the razors are shiny but at the right angle the scratches are very apparent. I need to know if I can get a true mirror shine by hand and without some sort of mechanical/electric polishing wheel?

I have looked around the site and it seems that I need to continue to use sand paper up to around 12,000 grit. At that point I would need to buff the blade. At that point I would use a variety of different compounds until there was a true mirror. Could this be done by hand?

I would appreciate if anyone could give me some advice or direct me to a thread where this has been discussed as I cannot find one.

thanks,
Stultsy

I'm sure it can be done by hand, but you may be at it this time next year. Most of us use buffers & different compounds to obtain a mirrored finish. It's simply faster & easier.

I have some razors that are mirror like & some that are matte that I have made and bought...there is no real "need" to have one mirrored unless that's your choice. I've come to prefer other than mirrored razors personally as they don't seem show every little hone mark or minute stain/water mark. You have to really pay a lot of attention to keep a razor perfectly mirror-like as well...

I usually wetsand through to 2k and then it's off for a nice hand polishing....If, by the time I'm done polishing, if there are still scratches, it means I wasn't paying attention during the wetsanding and missed a spot.

I agree with RED, When i started i would hand sand, start from 220 or so all the way up to 2k and polish with Mother mag to a mirror. If u are still having scratch marks that are visible then u would have to drop grit till u remove the scratches. So all in all it is possible.

Now what i do more recently is I hand sand from 80-600 ( depending on the damage of the razor) and at 600 I take it to a harbor freight buffer ( about 40 bucks) and run Emory,Stainless,White rouge,Crox compounds and after that I still hand polish with Mag. IMO there is a difference in terms of mirror shine with this method, But the same goes with this method, if u dont take all the scratches out from the lower grits then its never going to get better the further up you go.

Thanks guys,

so what i'm hearing is that:

1. the scratches I'm seeing are essentially the result of not doing a proper job at each grit level to ensure that I'm actually sanding out all the scratches from a previous grit. is that correct?

2. if I do a proper job of sanding out the scratches from the lower grit as a progress I should be able to obtain a mirror shine (no scratches from any angle) polishing by hand. is that correct?

thanks,
Stultsy

I think it also partly depends on what sort of light you are looking at the razor under and how close you are looking. There are times when I'm in the shop in the middle of working a blade, and I see all sorts of scratches. But when I bring the blade out of the shop and look later, under normal light, I can barely see the scratches or not see them at all. You can really drive yourself nuts chasing a mirror. I find it can be very helpful to put the thing down and come back a day or two later.

Getting back to your scratches - if you are very particular, you can still see marks on a blade from the green/chrome ox compound. Under some light, it'll look like scratches; under other light you won't see anything. Advice on how to go forward depends on what you call "scratches." (Very similar to situations where a guy says "I have a small chip in my razor, what hone should I use to get it out?" and the response is "What do you consider a small chip to be?")

Ideally I'm looking for no scratches from any angle in any light. is such a dream even possible?

Originally Posted by Stultstastic

Ideally I'm looking for no scratches from any angle in any light. is such a dream even possible?

Yes, but it's definitely not easy.