Thierry Duguet
Elite Cafe Member
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2007
- Messages
- 359
Buffing, which is define as: "Using a loose abrasive applied to the work wheel" is not a desirable way to refinish flat surface and is never use on quality firearms, actually, buffing is often use by manufacturers to hide the poor finish of their gun, the same thing can be say of brush finish. The purpose of refinishing is not to make a nice mirror like finish as in jewelry, the purpose is to enhance the line of the firearm and to dress the surface. High polish is hardly desirable, look at quality (expensive) firearms (Purdey, Boss, Ringby, Dakota, Galazan, Francotte, etc) how often do you see them with high polish? They do not need to, they are well finish and are not ashamed to show their lines. Most of the time a 400 to 600 grip finish is adequate if the gun is going to be rust blue, if the firearms is not going to be blue 600 to 800 is plenty, it is call drawing the line. I will add that unless you know what you are doing with a file you should not attempt to use that tool. Machine marks, and heavy scratches take for ever to remove with sand paper and just a few minutes with a file if you know what you are doing, if you do not you may create more problem for yourself than you solved. Refinishing the outside of a receiver should not take more than a day, if it take longer, more than 10-12 hours, the firearm is hardly worth the effort as it, most probably, never was a quality firearm to start with.
Using a popsicle stick is an amusing idea but not very useful, the support for your sand paper need to be very hard, if you fold it (the sand paper) not more than one lair, you do not polish on a spot, as you would create a depression, you polish on a complete surface from one end to the other of that surface, you also need to cross polish meaning that you do not always follow the same axe, you remove the line create by the previous sand paper with the next one. The last grip will be use in the longitudinal axe of the firearm, consistently (even the fence).
One last point, do not forget the screws nothing look worst than an ugly screw on a nice flat surface, they often need to be redone/replace and time appropriately.
Using a popsicle stick is an amusing idea but not very useful, the support for your sand paper need to be very hard, if you fold it (the sand paper) not more than one lair, you do not polish on a spot, as you would create a depression, you polish on a complete surface from one end to the other of that surface, you also need to cross polish meaning that you do not always follow the same axe, you remove the line create by the previous sand paper with the next one. The last grip will be use in the longitudinal axe of the firearm, consistently (even the fence).
One last point, do not forget the screws nothing look worst than an ugly screw on a nice flat surface, they often need to be redone/replace and time appropriately.
Last edited: