We’ve all been there: you spend hours meticulously sawing, filing, soldering, and forming, but then you get to the polishing stage and everything comes out lousy. It’s easy to get confused at this point, because the results of your efforts are less tangible than in other stages of the fabrication process. The thing to keep in mind about polishing is that it’s not just about getting the piece shiny. Rather, it’s about removing scratches in a methodical order, so that the piece gets progressively cleaner and cleaner.
If your polishing routine isn’t turning out well, it’s rarely because you aren’t putting enough elbow grease into it. It’s usually because you’re skipping grits or stages, or because you’re trying to polish out scratches that are too deep. The place to start is before you touch a buffing wheel. Polishing starts with surface prep. If you’re still have deep file marks on a ring, you aren’t going to buff them out. What will probably happen is that your buff will dull them a bit and make them much harder to see. This can make it look like you’re making progress when really you’re not.
Instead, I recommend that after every stage of grit (ie after filing, after sanding, after polishing), you pause and examine your work very closely under a direct light. Slowly turn the piece so that any lines or scratches will appear. If you see any lines, then you’re not done yet. The goal is to get each scratch out before moving on to the next stage. If you don’t do this, you will not be able to get a good shine. One issue I see a lot is that you’re trying to change too many things at once.
You might be using sanding sticks, then polishing paper, then tripoli, and then a buff, all in a period of 10 minutes or so. But you won’t know which stage actually made a difference. Here’s an exercise you can try. Take a piece of scrap sheet or a plain band, and practice sanding on it. Sand one section of the piece with one grit of sandpaper, until it looks flat and even. Then switch to the next grit of sandpaper, but sand at a slightly different angle, so that the previous scratches are still visible.
That last part is important: by changing the angle of the sandpaper, you give yourself a way to judge whether the previous scratches are gone. If you just sand at the same angle, then you can’t see the scratches anymore, even if they’re still there. You have to use the angle of the sandpaper to “develop” the scratches, so you can tell whether they’re gone or not. This exercise is more valuable than trying to polish 3 pieces in a row and having all of them turn out bad.
Take 15 minutes, and try the exercise on one small piece of metal. The first 5 minutes, use a file to intentionally scratch up the piece. Then the next 5 minutes, remove those scratches with one grit of sandpaper, until the scratches are gone and the piece looks even. Then, for the final 5 minutes, take the piece through one or two more stages, and look carefully at the reflection after each one. Finally, take a minute to write down at what stage you stopped seeing improvement. Often, this will tell you where the problem with your routine is.
Was the first set of scratches too deep? Was the paper wearing out too fast? Was your hand getting tired and putting uneven pressure on the piece? When you’re not seeing the improvement you want, one of the best things you can do is take a step backward. If you’re polishing something and you still see random deep scratches, don’t try to buff them out. Instead, go back to the sandpaper that should have removed them. If you’re buffing something and the edges are getting too soft, don’t keep trying to buff them harder. Instead, go back and protect the edges better before you buff.
A lot of people think that the goal of polishing is to get the metal shiny as fast as possible, but the goal is really to maintain clean edges and lines while polishing. If you just try to get the piece shiny, you’ll end up flattening out the edges. Finally, the way to get feedback while you’re polishing is to look at the light on the piece, and to change the angle. If you put the piece under a lamp and slowly turn it, a clean, shiny finish will reflect the light evenly. If there are still scratches, they will break up the reflection and you’ll see them clearly.
