Thread: Removing pitting

Hi,

I have been hand sanding this blade for many hours, right now I am only at 220 grit Wet/dry..

If I move up in grit to 320 will the finer grit remove the micropitting that remains? or should I just keep workin it / try to remove all pitting before using a finer grade paper?


Does anyone know about how old this blade is? it's a pretty nice wedge maybe 7/8th

Thanks for the help.
Neale

It looks pretty good right now but if you want to remove all the pitting you have to keep at it. You need to remove alot of metal to get pitting out so I wouldn't move up in grit since it will just take that much longer to remove it.

Sorry, don't know anything about the blade.

Will Do, Thanks!

Yeah, it's usually takes some extra effort to remove that last bit of annoying pitting. Keep at it with 320 if you want to. I mean, the lower the grit, the quicker it should come out.

The blade looks pretty damn nice as it is though. I think I'd be satisfied with it if it was just left there. If you are going for a mirror finish, then I'd probably remove as many of the flaws as possible. A high polish finish makes any flaws more noticeable.

Sweet, Thanks Jason!

I am going to keep at it with the 220, maybe I should have worked the 100 a little longer but I was concerned about removing too much metal from the areas that showed no pitting..

Now there is just a few problem areas that remain, so hopefully only another hour or two before I can start going to a finer grit. The pits are very small, but as you stated would be very visible when highly polished.

Thanks, I'll keep going....

Neale

Neale,

I admire your will to keep at it!

I would have tapped out long ago.
Something that I found helped was to add a little mineral oil when hand sanding. It goes a little faster with the slurry that is made.

Also, were gloves, that metal sludge really stains the hands/fingers....you don't want to make your intake of heavy metals through absorption too high

Keep us posted! I agree with the others, the blade looks great!

C utz

Originally Posted by C utz

Neale,

I admire your will to keep at it!

I would have tapped out long ago.
Something that I found helped was to add a little mineral oil when hand sanding. It goes a little faster with the slurry that is made.

Also, were gloves, that metal sludge really stains the hands/fingers....you don't want to make your intake of heavy metals through absorption too high

Keep us posted! I agree with the others, the blade looks great!

C utz

Thanks C Utz,

I remember reading a post were Vlad also suggested the use of oil, so I tried it first with so Jojoba oil as that was all I could find quickly..it worked well, after looking in the garage I found some light bearing oil, it's a little thicker than the Jojoba oil and seems to make a better slurry.

The gloves are a very good idea, I'm have to steal a pair from my wife

Thanks for the encouragement,
Neale

Latex gloves allow you to do more detailed work and they're like $3 for a pack of 50 at WM.

P.S. Nice work

Thanks Ilija,

I'll check out WM, my wife has some too from the hospital when we had the baby, hopefully it will make the oily blade easier to grip while sanding.

Thanks again

Actually it will make the blade a bit more slippery. That's why I do it on top of a 1' piece of 2x4. Makes sanding the spine and the top of the tang a lot easier. When you hit WM also get mineral oil from their pharmacy. It's like $2-3 a bottle. Set some aside for metal-working and keep it in a separate container and you can use the rest for your cutting boards, as a laxative, ring removal and a bunch of other uses