How to polish a saw plate

[Christian Castillo]

Hi, a few months ago I saw a beautiful saw restored by Daryl Weir in a post over at woodnet, he did mention he used no sandpaper or machines, with those two hints I set off to see if I could find a way to replicate his results. My saw plate polishing method is performed with the following steps, although step 1 may be omitted if the saw plate has light rust/tarnishing and the rust issue isn't severe as step 2 can actually cut through a lot of rust on its own.

Disclaimer: Wear gloves, the ball of foil will chew up your skin.

1. Use a razor blade or something similar to scrape off as much rust as you can off the saw plate.

2. Use a high quality metal polish ( Autosol, Flitz etc. ) and dab it onto the saw plate, no need to waste a lot, you can literally just bang the tube of polish against the plate in key areas so that you will have enough polish to do the job. Now get some Aluminum foil, crumple it up into a ball and begin scrubbing the plate until you literally clean the polish off the plate. You will understand what I mean as you keep scrubbing, eventually the aluminum foil will clean up the plate and take all the polish off as if it is wiping it clean. If there are some areas that could use more polishing, just dab some more metal polish on and keep working until you are satisfied.

That is it, this method is incredibly clean since you do not have dirty mineral spirits or water and steel sloshing around and staining everything near it. The saw plate will literally clean itself and if you are careful, you many not even dirty your hands. The foil is too soft to abrade the saw plate, but is hard enough to scrub away the rust. The polish will then brighten and clean the plate making it very smooth and reflective, perfect qualities for a hand saw. I love this method because you do not introduce new abrasion marks into an old tool and I feel it achieves results faster, cleaner all while retaining the marks of age and history, I'm done going through a grit progression of sand paper, I'll save grit progression for sharpening.

Excuse the quality of the pictures, I took them about an hour and a half ago outside. It took me 20 minutes to finish the one side of this saw, I'm going to polish up the side with the etch tomorrow, it's late and dark but if you see how the plates shine in the day light, its really something.


IMG_2555 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr


IMG_2556 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr


IMG_2558 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr

[Charlie Stanford]

Hi, a few months ago I saw a beautiful saw restored by Daryl Weir in a post over at woodnet, he did mention he used no sandpaper or machines, with those two hints I set off to see if I could find a way to replicate his results. My saw plate polishing method is performed with the following steps, although step 1 may be omitted if the saw plate has light rust/tarnishing and the rust issue isn't severe as step 2 can actually cut through a lot of rust on its own.

Disclaimer: Wear gloves, the ball of foil will chew up your skin.

1. Use a razor blade or something similar to scrape off as much rust as you can off the saw plate.

2. Use a high quality metal polish ( Autosol, Flitz etc. ) and dab it onto the saw plate, no need to waste a lot, you can literally just bang the tube of polish against the plate in key areas so that you will have enough polish to do the job. Now get some Aluminum foil, crumple it up into a ball and begin scrubbing the plate until you literally clean the polish off the plate. You will understand what I mean as you keep scrubbing, eventually the aluminum foil will clean up the plate and take all the polish off as if it is wiping it clean. If there are some areas that could use more polishing, just dab some more metal polish on and keep working until you are satisfied.

That is it, this method is incredibly clean since you do not have dirty mineral spirits or water and steel sloshing around and staining everything near it. The saw plate will literally clean itself and if you are careful, you many not even dirty your hands. The foil is too soft to abrade the saw plate, but is hard enough to scrub away the rust. The polish will then brighten and clean the plate making it very smooth and reflective, perfect qualities for a hand saw. I love this method because you do not introduce new abrasion marks into an old tool and I feel it achieves results faster, cleaner all while retaining the marks of age and history, I'm done going through a grit progression of sand paper, I'll save grit progression for sharpening.

Excuse the quality of the pictures, I took them about an hour and a half ago outside. It took me 20 minutes to finish the one side of this saw, I'm going to polish up the side with the etch tomorrow, it's late and dark but if you see how the plates shine in the day light, its really something.


IMG_2555 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr


IMG_2556 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr


IMG_2558 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr

That's an incredible transformation.

[Chris Griggs]

WOW! Very cool. Thanks for the info.

[David Weaver]

That's a fantastic result. Much bigger fan of that than running through multiple grits of sandpaper on hardened spring steel.

[Adam Cruea]

Wow. Shiny. :-D

Is there a functional purpose to polishing the blade, or is it just a restoration thing/personal preference?

[Chris Vandiver]

Brilliant(no pun intended)!!

[Peter Pedisich]

Another benefit is that they will probably resist rust - I have used Autosol on plane bodies and they have been the ones to not get a speck of rust on them - even when left out in my garage on Long Island year round!

[Jared McMahon]

Wow. Shiny. :-D

Is there a functional purpose to polishing the blade, or is it just a restoration thing/personal preference?

With a mirror finish, your work piece is reflected in the saw plate. You can use the reflection to help tell when you're cutting at a true 90 degree angle from your working surface. Check out the website for The Woodwright's Shop, specifically the episode with Chris Schwarz about saws, he demonstrates this idea.

[Jim Koepke]

OMG! Another technique to get me doing something other than all the other stuff that needs doing.

Looks great though.

and thanks for sharing.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

A smooth blade will also have less resistance in the kerf.

Combatting rust may be another benefit.

jtk

[Christian Castillo]

I haven't started on the Disston 7 shown, but I can show you how the test saw, the D-8 panel saw etch turned out :

I made no special effort around the etch, I polished like I just didn't care, but I'm still testing this out so please exercise some caution so I don't have a lot of people saying I ruined their saw etches. From what I know, I just don't see how foil and metal polish can ruin an etch unless you polish till your arm falls off. With this particular saw, after scraping, I did hit it with a klingspor medium (220 grit?) rust eraser on stubborn areas, I omitted that step with the Disston 7 though, so you can hit the plate with some abrasive for coarse rust clean up, but then I've had luck just jumping straight to foil and polish.


IMG_2559 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr


IMG_2560 by Christian Castillo1, on Flickr

[Tony Shea]

Great idea and awesome results. I have a pile of saws that will benefit from this. My favorite saw I own is a Simonds that has an amazing polish to it. Not sure how it was done but something about it being polished really helps it in the cut and just makes it feel like a good quality saw. It never rusts either.

[george wilson]

Good results!!! I intend to use your method on a few old saws I have,a D-12,among others.

[Daniel Sutton]

What makes a quality metal polish? The only thing that I have on hand is Brasso. The Autosol MSDS, not the one directing to the 1040 tax form, only lists hydrocarbons, water, and other non toxic ingredients. I would like to try this method in the near future.

[Christian Castillo]

I tried brasso and wasn't pleased, it leaves a far duller finish than can be achieved with autosol and you work just as hard.