How to polish a saw plate

[Window Guy]

I would be curious as to what Daryl Weir does as his saws just look drop dead gorgeous after his refurbishing. Hopefully one day he will explain and share.

Steve

[Steve Friedman]

Window Guy said:

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I would be curious as to what Daryl Weir does as his saws just look drop dead gorgeous after his refurbishing. Hopefully one day he will explain and share.

Steve

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He may do more when he refurbishes a saw, but the finishing steps from Daryl's website are:

1. 600 grit silicon carbide paper with MS
2. Polish with "worn 600 grit, used dry only."
3. Buff with paste wax

Daryl Weir

Based on my limited experience (and Christian's description), Foiling is not intended to remove major rust. It's really the second step in cleaning a sawplate (or other tool).

Steve

[MarvW]

Hi Steve,

That's pretty much how I do it also. Doing the 600 grit dry and continuing to use it after it is clogged, does a surprisingly good job of adding more shine to the plate. In my opinion, with an old saw, there's a point where the finish on the plate should kinda represent the age of the saw. If the over-all look of the saw is close to how it looked originally, including the handle, a shiny bright plate is befitting. But, like so many things of this nature, it comes down to one's preferences.

[TobyC]

bump

[Mark Stansbury]

I remove rust with 400 grit paper, dense foam sanding block, and water, trying to follow the grain. Afterwards I have polished No. 12s and others with 600 grit and water but it loads up quickly. 3M has 500 grit wet and dry which I would like to try.

For polishing brass, steel, or aluminum, I like Blue Magic Metal Polish Cream. It must be a finer abrasive and may have an optical brightener, because it will put a blinding shine on saw nuts and other brass. I use Blue Magic on a toothpick to get the black spots off saw medallions and work around the letters. The toothpick also gets the slots. It does have less wax in it so follow with paste wax to preserve the shine. Picture is of nuts I polished last year but did not wax.
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[Mark Stansbury]

Posted above without reading all 16 pages of this thread, so I want to make up for reading the beginning and end and skipping the juicy middle.

If you just found this thread, it's about removing rust and polishing saw plates (and other steel and iron) using crumpled/balled aluminum foil and 1 of these: Autosol, Flitz, Meguiar's Metal Finishing Polish, DuPont No. 7 Clear Coat Polishing Compound, chrome oxide, green rouge (or blue or white), Mother's Mag & Aluminum Polish, diamond paste, Festool 6000 grit, silicon carbide powder 600 grit, or Blue Magic Metal Polish Cream. Brasso was rated too aggressive. There was a pic of Goldie Hawn too, and I recommend YouTube for further research on that.

My 2 cents is that silicon carbide grits are cheapest on eBay, and the aforementioned Pep Boys is also a cheap source for wet & dry paper as well as polishing creams. My saw cleaning bench is outside in the cold, but will try this ASAP.

[TobyC]

I wish more people would carefully clean the saw nuts and label screws so as to not remove excess metal and damage the lettering and imagery. Too many people see cleaning these items as a last minute annoyance before reassembling the saw, so they just shove them on a wire wheel on their grinder, or use sandpaper. If nothing else is available, just use toothpaste and an old toothbrush, and wax afterward. I wax the whole thing, threads and all, and apply machine oil or petroleum jelly inside the nuts by spinning in a Q- tip by hand, NOT TOO MUCH, just enough so they can be removed next time.


These are cool! Clean and undamaged.

[Christian Castillo]

Blast from the past , I'll probably do another saw once I can find time getting my schedule straightened out and post my results in the near future.

[TobyC]

Cool!

[Gregory of Sherwood Forest]

Good one to save.