How to polish a saw plate

[MattP]

I tried brasso just to see if it would work, because it's all I had around the house.

My latest ebay acquisition looked like this:



I used aluminum foil and brasso and worked pretty hard for about 15 minutes where the etch should be, and found it:






So mine isn't as bright as the others pictured. I'm not sure if that's because I am using brasso, which really isn't made for use on steels other than stainless, or whether I just haven't worked at it long enough. At the rate I'm going it looks like it'll take maybe 2 hours to get the saw plate into good condition. This is the first saw I ever worked on cleaning, so I'm not sure how that compares to other methods, or this method with a different polish.

[MarvW]

Hi Christian,

Looks like a good idea. I'm going to give it a go. I do the scraping thing using a box scraper blade held in a plastic handle designed for holding them for the use of scraping. I find that in about 80% of the saws I've done, the scraper gets about 80% of the rust off. I do, however use Mineral Spirits when doing the scraping, but I'd rather not have to use it. It is messy, that's for sure and I don't like breathing it.

Thanks for sharing your experiment. We all want an easier and faster way to clean our rusty saws.

[Timberwolf]

I just cleaned one side of a Simonds panel saw with an aluminum foil pad and used a tiny amount of chrome oxide that I shaved off the stick onto the saw plate..The pad, along with a few drops of oil worked really well to bring out the etch and polish the plate..It appears that one doesn't not have to use autosol or any metal polish other than green rouge, which most of us already have for use on our strops....but blue rouge, or white rouge would work as well..They are all fine abrasive polishes. Just use the back side of a knife blade to scrape it. I may have to give diamond paste a go..I know that would work...

[Timberwolf]

Marv...try the diamond paste....no oil......works like gangbusters!!!!!!

[Christian Castillo]

Timberwolf said:

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I just cleaned one side of a Simonds panel saw with an aluminum foil pad and used a tiny amount of chrome oxide that I shaved off the stick onto the saw plate..The pad, along with a few drops of oil worked really well to bring out the etch and polish the plate..It appears that one doesn't not have to use autosol or any metal polish other than green rouge, which most of us already have for use on our strops....but blue rouge, or white rouge would work as well..They are all fine abrasive polishes. Just use the back side of a knife blade to scrape it. I may have to give diamond paste a go..I know that would work...

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I want to thank everyone for giving this method a go and for further experimenting with different polishes, I used brasso and it does not work that good, it was just very dull looking compared to the results I got with autosol. I'm glad you guys are finding more economic alternatives as autosol is a little pricey. Scraping the plate well really reduces the amount of time necessary with the foil and polish step. I have found the polish and foil to be very etch-safe .

[KSMike]

I've used Autosol quite a bit lately in cleaning up flooded stuff. It really is amazing! But, I'm not sure there's really much difference between it and Flitz. They both have some extremely fine abrasive and they both seem to have the same chemical reaction with the metal.

BTW, if we're going to post Laugh In pics I'd have much preferred Goldie Hawn...

[TobyC]

KSMike said:

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BTW, if we're going to post Laugh In pics I'd have much preferred Goldie Hawn...

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Well yeah, but her words were meaningless!





Toby

[KSMike]

[eg54string]

Thanks for the tip, TW.

After I've used the $14 worth of autosol I ordered, and then the $8.00 (for 4 oz.) Meguiar's, I'll give the green rouge a shot.
But, I would have paid Daryl a hundred to have learned his method.


One a side note, the Al pad method revealed a PO etch on my saws, one "Elliot Sayward", WW author, with a library at the Davistown museum named for him. Here's a better shot (future online auction pic):

[Christian Castillo]

I'm really glad to see that you're getting good results, I hope everyone else will figure out how to get this to work for them and, hopefully, we will have world filled with shiny saws .