Polishing/buffing questions

bein' one of them milk-sop northerners (wait a minute, no I ain't - born in NM and raised with pueblo Indians!!) I always preferred hominy grits!

all right, I'll bite...what's "etch" when you're working with wrought iron?

Bert

Reply to
Bert Olton
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As of today, yes. But I hadn't thought of protecting the wheel from any contamination from "off-surface" edges of the work piece. hmmm.....

lol...that's what I'm after.

many thanks.

Bert

Reply to
Bert Olton

As mentioned by others, as you increase in grit you have to grind out all the previous grit's scratches before moving on. If you grind at 90 degrees for 400 grit, then move up to 600 and do it at 90, it's difficult to see any remaining 400 scratches. So, some methods are to change the angle of the scratches between grits, other was to use a sharpie. Sharpies are OK for coloring smaller pieces, and maybe for some larger ones, if you have a bigger pen then mine. I use them still to mark metal for sharpening. I have a tub of acid that I use to etch metal. Works great for a quickie color to steel after say, 400 grit (turns the metal grey). Now as I grind at 600 it becomes very obvious where the 400 grit scratches are, so I would get them all out before moving up. This is why I didnt chime in earlier on this thread, I figured you wouldnt have at your disposal a tub of acid :). I did however, after reading your post just now, clean a piece of wrought, and tried some etchant on it, just to see if it would color (since I've never had a need to etch it), after about a minute it turned from shiny to a grey. It wasnt really that noticable to me, the way steel is, until I cleaned up a section next to it and saw there was a difference.

Reply to
Forger

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