Sword Polishing

as for Hiroshi's dangle rule of thumb, well let's just say he let me polish and sharpen his sword on my belt sander moving at hundreds of surface feet per minute and he never so much as asked if I could polish his dangle with it and I don't think he'd do it on his own in private either, so that kinda shoots that rule. sorry buddy, that rule works for washing a sword but not polishing to restore from damage.

here's a bit of a post (slightly edited) from a recent discussion I was having with a fellow who wanted to polish some armor to a mirror finish. it all works the same way only the piece being polished is a different shape. so this works for swords too, you just gotta be more careful of the edges on swords than armor.

you could polish at a deep scratch with chrome polish, flitz, metal-glo, mothers, etc. or even light grit sand paper forever and still not fix it. you have to use something with a grain coarse enough to take the metal down to the lowest part of the scratch (in some cases you won't want to do that because a scratch can be so deep you'd have to make the piece so thin as to make it very delicate, so sometimes it is better to leave a deep flaw and just smooth it's edges a bit). so lets say you have to use 120 grit sand paper to get that scratch out. you will then have to polish the entire piece with 120 grit paper (if you really want it perfect). then you would have to polish the entire piece up to the next highest grit you can get which is probably 220. then you need to polish the entire piece up to the next grit which is probably 300 or 400. and keep progressing this way until you reach 2000 grit. after the 2000 grit if you wanted a true mirror polish you would need to go up to buffing pads and compound but if you can get higher grit papers and you have done a really good job of getting all those scratches in the past grit levels then you can get a mirror or semi mirror polish as low as 800 - 1000 grit, but the higher grit you can get and use the brighter the final polish. keep in mind that your lowest (coarsest) grit has to erase 100% of the flaw or you will never get it out all the way unless you go back down to that lowest grit or even lower. then the next grit you use has to erase 100% of the scratches made by the previous grit or you will never get those scratches out all the way and they will break up your mirror polish or leave it cloudy depending on what level of scratch pattern you failed to get out. of course this requirement to get all the scratches out continues all the way up to your 2000 grit (or whatever your finest grit level is) which must get every scratch from the 1500 (or previous) grit out. so that when you go to polish with your buffing machine there is no scratch on your piece that is deeper than 2000 grit (buffing machines are very optional on swords and can be very dangerous too, I advise compounds like flitz, mother's, etc.) also you need to make the pattern on every level of grit as tight and as uniform as possible and it helps to have it go in one direction only and for each level of grit to go perpendicular to the previous one (circles are not good do not polish in circles by hand). that way if you are going right to left and see a top to bottom scratch you know you haven't taken all the scratches out from the previous grit yet and you have more work to do. once you get to the 1000+ grit level it will be very difficult if not impossible to see the differences in the grit level of the scratches if they are going the same direction but if you don't get them all out at that level you will never attain a true mirror polish. this is why it is a good idea to alternate the direction of your polish with every grit level. it also breaks up a little of the monotony.

yes, this can take a very long time.