Polishing a blade

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Sure many people sharpen their knives, but when you are looking for a highly polished edge with a super fine cutting surface, stones and ceramics just aren't enough. I often use a diamond stone to do most of the lifting of sharpening, but switching over to a paste or polishing tape / paper of some kind is necessary to get the last of that mirror edge.
My diamond plate was found at a yard sale, and cost me 25 cents. These plates are available at most big box retailers which have any knife sharpening gear for about 20-30 bucks.

Before we can get that mirror edge though, we need to understand a bit about grits and microns. Lower grit means more abrasive, whereas lower micron means less. So a 1 micron sheet is extremely smooth, where as a 60 grit piece of sand paper is very rough. Makes sense right? Ok- with that out of the way we can talk about sharpening. 

For today's sharpening test, I used my Spyderco Tenacious pocket knife (Spyderco Tenacious G-10 Handle Folding Plain Edge Knife) Polishing tapes are actually kind of expensive, so I thought I'd try something different and see how it worked out.  I ordered some polishing paper (37-948 3M Micron Polishing Papers 8 1/2x11" Asst (6)) from Zona Hobby via Amazon.

I started with the 30 micron paper and worked all of the way through the series to the 1 micron paper. I would have taken pics of the process, but frankly I was one hand shy of operating the camera and sharpening the knife at the same time.

I did 10 strokes on each side of the blade through each paper. I did like how the polishing papers are really more of polishing cloths, and they seem like they will hold up well to use over time. I also liked how these papers could very easily be applied to putting convex edges on knives if  a person were to use a mouse pad as a backer to the cloth while sharpening. The outcome however, was only so-so.

It is a bit difficult to see in the photos, but the edge did polish up noticeably. The blade however, did not get much sharper as determined via paper cut test before and after the papers were used.

before

after

These cloths are nice for buffing and polishing, but as for adding that final edge I was hoping for on a knife, they leave something to be desired. Overall, I'd say hold off on these unless you wanted them more as just buffing cloths for putting a shine back on your whole blade, rather than just polishing up the actual cutting surface. Not the worst 9 dollar investment - but really not one that needs to be made either.