Thread: Removing 2000 grit scratches by hand...jewler's rouge maybe???

3M makes a micron-graded finishing paper (more like cloth) for jewelry finishing. Grits range from 400-8000. It is less aggressive than some other abrasives, and leaves a nice finish.

I personally say embrace the scratches. There's nothing quite like a well hand-sanded blade, with every scratch uniform and parallel. Here's a closeup photo of a sashimi knife my mother finished. The hollow has been hand-sanded to only 600 grit and the bevel was done on an 8k Naniwa. Finishing this blade properly took time (about two months) but the effect is amazing. Small blades like razors are much more manageable.



Phillip

Matt,

Here's an inexpensive hint. Instead of looking for rouge on websites and such, which will be shipped to you at a cost plus they come in quarter and pound batches......hit up the jewelry stores in your area. I went door to door, had a couple misses, but found a really nice guy who cut me a piece of some of his rouges when I explained what they were for.

I pulled out my wallet and he said "never mind, just tell me later if it worked".

Maybe there's a nice jeweller in your area?

Yeah I was thinking of that as well, I just haven't had time to go around knocking on jeweller's doors. I tried sandpaper.com for the micro mesh but they have a silly rule that you have to spend as least $50. Does anybody know where you can get some and there's no minimum price?

The abrasive in jeweller's rouge is (I think) iron oxide. It works fine on steel. In 0.1 micron grit, it's one of the ingredients in Whipped Dog's "Poor Man's Strop Kit". I don't know the grit size of jeweller's rouge, but it's way finer than 2000 grit.

Chrome oxide, 0.5 microns, is usually used with power tools (even if just a Dremel). I bet it would work with a polishing cloth, as well. You can buy it as stropping paste. Or considerably cheaper (with other stuff mixed in, including wax binder):

Veritas® Honing Compound - Lee Valley Tools

I've been using it on a pasted strop; it leaves a nice edge on a razor.

If you're in the US, Woodcraft sells similar stuff at similar prices.

Charles

Have you considered polishing with Maas to see how well that does before buying more equipment? Maybe enough depending on the scratches.

I was actually just at lee valley yesterday picking up some micro mesh. I looked at that honing compound, but I wasn't sure if you could apply it straight to the razor with a cloth or if you needed a dedicated strop.

If you hit up Home Depot, they have a polishing kit for Dremels that's about twenty bucks. In it is a red polishing compound. I use this with my dremel (soft felt wheel), followed by the same red and a cotton rag, followed by Chromium Oxide on a soft felt dremel wheel, and then Fabulustre (which is a final white jewelers buffing compound), followed by Maas.

Seems to work pretty well.

The red compound sounds like it might be jeweller's rouge. I think any kind of waxy compound tends to burn off or get flung off the tiny, high-speed Dremel wheels a bit faster than you would want. You can calculate the speed of wheel surface on steel surface, and find it not very different from a big, slower wheel. But any given point is out of contact, and thus cooling, for a smaller proportion of the time.

Better than a rag, I think, might be the largest, hardest pencil eraser you can find, or some other block of rubber. For a hollow-ground eraser you could cast an epoxy filler compound lap to match the curvature of the surface, or the same with bismuth alloy, which melt at a lower temperature than boiling water. Useful alloys (probably with differences which don't matter for this application) are Cerrosafe (from gunsmiths' merchants such as World's Largest Supplier of Gun Parts, Gunsmith Tools & Shooting Accessories - Brownells), Cerrobend (from plumbers' merchants, to bend pipes without buckling) or Woods metal (from I don't know who.)

Any of these shoud make more economical use of diamond paste than a rotary wheel.