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.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7441/8719990566_175671ab4b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990566/)
IMG_2555 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990566/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7284/8719990942_5f5db9e910.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990942/)
IMG_2556 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990942/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7310/8719991624_9c3b45a802.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719991624/)
IMG_2558 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719991624/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), 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.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7441/8719990566_175671ab4b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990566/)
IMG_2555 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990566/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7284/8719990942_5f5db9e910.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990942/)
IMG_2556 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719990942/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7310/8719991624_9c3b45a802.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719991624/)
IMG_2558 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719991624/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), 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 http://www.forums.woodnet.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowsmile.gif:

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.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7299/8719824919_8bdf85e9ae.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719824919/)
IMG_2559 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8719824919/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7327/8720948496_99469a4d80.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8720948496/)
IMG_2560 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/50072175@N07/8720948496/) by Christian Castillo1 (http://www.flickr.com/people/50072175@N07/), 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.

[Daniel Sutton]

Thanks, I'll have to get some and try it out.

[Shaun Mahood]

Man that works amazingly well - I tried it on my saws, planes, and holdfasts and it is quicker and easier than everything I've tried before. I think I may have to turn down the lights in my shop when I'm done :)
Thanks a lot Christian, I have a bunch of saws that need a lot of clean up and I was kind of dreading doing it before this.

[Brent VanFossen]

Thanks, Christian. I have a few old handsaws that need some polish. And the sandpaper method is dirty hard work.

[Edward Moore]

It works so well because of a chemical reaction between the aluminium and the rust - one steals the extra oxygen atom from the other causing the rust to break down. The polish just sweetens the deal by adding an abrasive and usually some cleaning solvent for good measure. The heat from the scrubbing provides energy for the reaction. I agree that this works on pretty much everything in need of some quick rust removal and polish. Definitely recommend Autosol.

[Michael Ray Smith]

Interesting! I wonder if there's something more than just abrasion going on with the aluminum foil. The reason I mention it is that there's a great way to remove tarnish from silver using aluminum foil. The tarnish is mostly silver sulfide, which can be physically removed by polishing it, but that means that you lose a little bit of the silver each time you polish it. Another method is to wrap the tarnished silver in aluminum foil and immerse it in a warm solution of salt and baking soda. There's an electrochemical reaction between the elemental aluminum and the silver sulfide, with one of the products being elemental silver. In theory, you don't lose any silver that way, but in my experience you still have to polish the silver anyway to get a nice shiny surface (I use toothpaste as a polish), but it's a lot easier than removing all the tarnish by polishing. Now back to your rusty saw -- the iron in the rust is not as easy to reduce as silver, but it's still slightly easier to reduce iron than aluminum (I think), so I wonder if the physical scrubbing of the saw blade with aluminum foil is helped out a bit by chemistry. I know there are other Neanderthals who are far better chemists than I am, and I invite them to correct anything I may have wrong.

[Paul Saffold]

This has jogged a long forgotten memory of my mom cleaning her iron with aluminum foil and salt. As I remember, and I could be completely mistaken, she sprinkled salt on and rubbed like crazy with wadded up foil. Also Aluminum foil was not something to be used once and discarded. It was washed and dried just like any of the dishes until it had too many holes.

I guess I should I should add for those who aren't familiar with an iron. They were used to remove wrinkles from clothes.:)

[Dale Coons]

Autosol looks to be a great product. A quick check of the auto store chain websites and the blue and orange boxes turned up bupkiss. I see it online at amazon and other places including the autosol website, but the shipping more than doubles the price. $12 for a $9 tube of product seems silly. Anyone know of a chain or store type that might carry it locally?

[lowell holmes]

I bought mine from Lee Valley.

[Lloyd Robins]

This is a late reply, but I was just directed here from another thread. Thank you for the information. I will be giving it a try.

[Richard Line]

Edward, thanks for the chemistry on this method. It helped ease my curiosity factor. With or without that info, I was going to give this method a go.

[Mike Allen1010]

Autosol looks to be a great product. A quick check of the auto store chain websites and the blue and orange boxes turned up bupkiss. I see it online at amazon and other places including the autosol website, but the shipping more than doubles the price. $12 for a $9 tube of product seems silly. Anyone know of a chain or store type that might carry it locally?

I'm with you Dale, I would love to pick up some Autosol at a local retailer and would appreciate hearing from anyone who knows where it might be stocked locally other than mail order.

Thanks, Mike

[Mark Baldwin III]

Try checking your local grocery store. I know I can get several different metal polish compounds at mine, I believe Autosol is amongst them. Flitz is definitely there. As soon as I am able to get back to work, I'm going to try this out.

[Bill White]

MAAS polish also works well.
Bill

[Adrian Ponik]

Not to resurrect a dead thread, but I was in my local Woodcraft last week and discovered they now carry Autosol. I don't know if it was just my store (can't find it on their website) but it was sitting on the shelf next to all the polishing cloths and associated stuff. Not cheap at just under $10 a tube, but that tube will sure do a lot of saw plates.