The original finish looks more like fine stone washed/walnut shell tumbled instead of mirror polished to me.
You need to hear from Neil. His blades are amazingly well polished and second to none.Hopefully he'll chime in soon.
Quote from: Benner on January 04, 2009, 06:24:33 PMYou need to hear from Neil. His blades are amazingly well polished and second to none.Hopefully he'll chime in soon. OK Ben, what are you after My honest advice, unless its a blade on a rare SAK, don't bother. Yes I have and still do take beatup SAK blades to a mirror finish but it takes so long.I start with 600 grit paper (UK scale) and lay it on a flat surface and rub the blade along, always in the same direction. After that I check to see if there are any really deep marks that are going to mean starting the process back at 400 or even 320.If all is well I then move to 800 grit and repeat, this time rubbing the blade in the opposite direction until I can see none of the marks left by the 600 grit paper. You keep doing this up to 1200 or even 1500 depending on the final look you want. At this stage you can either buff or hand polish with something like Brasso. For that ultimate shine, after the Brasso clean up and finish off with a very mildly abrasive quality car polish then hand buff like you would your car.There are probably mechanical short cuts and I do experiment from time to time. The problem with using the little polishing wheels on dremels and the like is that its tricky to get a truly uniform polish across the blade, worst still its all to easy to slip and just catch the collet on the blade (that might just be me ) and suddenly you're back at stage one.On a slightly more cheery note, often a vintage SAK looks best showing some of its age. You can polish up the blade with just high grit paper and then move straight to polishing. This gives you a nice (IMO) shiny blade but one that still shows the years of previous use.Should you find a nice quick way of getting to a mirror finish I'll certainly be all ears Neil
Now post a pic of you Pioneer
Quote from: Micky d on January 04, 2009, 10:17:32 PMNow post a pic of you Pioneer Its not technically a mirror finish on that blade though is it (Image removed from quote.)More of a convexed satin finish oh I've changed my mind maybe I'll mirror it maybe I won't wait it looks quite good if I buff up the bevel but leave the rest kind of finish Its brother the old '85 red Farmer will hopefully soon be joining it. I'm going to do the blade the same.Neil
Quote from: jzmtl on January 04, 2009, 04:02:07 AMThe original finish looks more like fine stone washed/walnut shell tumbled instead of mirror polished to me.Looks like a mirror finish to me:(Image removed from quote.)(Note the image of the tree above reflected in the blade).