H-1 Blade Scratches

[GarageBoy]

Zdp caly 3.5 - nice dressy cf scales - sus410 cladding scratches if you breathe on it

[JD Spydo]

For trying to remove scratches from a steel like H-1 I would go with one of the more abrasive type metal polishes. The names of "Hagerty", BRASSO, or that stuff the machine tool shops use and it's called "Knorrostol". The problem with H-1 is that it's not all that resistant to abrasives thus it scrathes easier than most blade steels.

You could even use a super fine abrasive paper like "Crocus Cloth". Most all of my H-1 Spyderco blades are ones I use pretty hard and I really don't care if they get scratched or not. And if the user is going to use an H-1 blade for demanding cutting jobs I just wouldn't worry about it.

[Cambertree]

Scratches easy and polishes easy.

I don’t really care about scratching, and all my H1 knives are worker knives anyway.

Occasionally I apply sandpaper to crown the spines or make a more pointy tip angle to H1 knives. In those cases, I’ll repolish the blades too, as a bit of a ‘spa treatment’ by stropping the flats on some old benchstrops with a black, green, white compound progression. I don’t use those compounds much anymore, but I presume the black is an emery based compound, the green probably chromium oxide and the white some sort of alumina. They work well. Use a charged scrap of denim on the hollow grinds if you like.

But as everyone has said, it’s barely worth doing, the scratches will be back. As Lance said, just letting them form their own finish seems to be a good policy.

[z4vdBt]

Honest wear. Patina.

[Accutronman]

Thanks for everyone’s views and ideas on the topic. I improved the blade appearance by using 600 and 1000 grit sandpaper with Windex followed by a Flitz treatment using cotton wool rounds. Not perfect but isn’t as noticeable.