Thread: New Moro kris
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Old 12th February 2020, 02:56 PM   #19
kai
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 3,218
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How do you polish moro blades?
I was being a bit liberal with my parlance when suggesting polishing - I rather meant fine grinding and polishing. Anyway, that's pretty much an art (possibly several) and not easily explained.

There's a bunch of suitable abrasives for working steel surfaces by hand (aluminium oxide, aluminium carbide, silicon carbide, diamond being the most prominent), and even more formats in which they are sold depending on application; and certainly thousands of methods/strategies how these are brought into action and results optimized for given tasks/problems. Stick to a single rule: Never ever use power tools!

Your kris blade is in a pretty good shape overall; the thickest and probably most stubborn areas of corrosion/rust will be at the base of the blade; how you target this area may also effect your work strategy on the main part of the blade. If the clamps need to stay in place, this will make the work much more difficult to start with (regardless of method).

Sand paper is widely available but note that qualities vary by several orders of magnitude - cheap paper is usually not worth the hassle. If you go this route, I'd suggest to go for micro-mesh which is more forgiving. The surface may be a bit dulled from the vinegar or you may wish to grind out some scratches - I'd recommend not to try a full polish which will result in more loss of metal than really needed in this case. Choosing the best grit/grade to start with needs some experience (if you start with a too coarse grade, you introduce too many/heavy scratches and need to remove more metal. To avoid making mistakes, I'd suggest to start with really fine grit (= high number) and only work on a tiny "window" of the blade; avoid using pressure and check after some effort. If the result is not convincing, use the next grit on another window and so on until effort and finish seem to suit (without introducing unnecessary scratches). Then use this grit (or the next coarser one) to tackle the base of the blade first. For the base of the blade, abrasive rubber blocks may be easier to work with than micro-mesh. If dismantling works, I'd thoroughly degrease and treat with vinegar first!

Once the whole blade is "clean", successively work through the finer grades (etching between the last few grades can help the final etch); for this polishing/etching process you won't need any final grade with nominal particle size much smaller than 10 μm (verify since the grading numbers are not consistent between vendors much less harmonized internationally). A quick final etch (vinegar, citric acid, phosphoric acid, etc.) can be topped off with an extremely fine polish (and microcristalline wax) if so desired.

Regards,
Kai
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