Don't throw it out

[OLDE CUTLER]

Our neighborhood garage sales are coming up in a few weeks, so I have been sorting thru things and throwing stuff into boxes that it has come time to part with. One thing I ran across that I had forgotten about was from a few years back. My wifes car had the ugly yellow tinged headlights, so I had bought a Turtle Wax kit to re polish and renew the lenses. It didn't take much to get them clear and shiny again, so there was plenty of the kit leftover. I was going to throw it in one of the boxes and put a dollar on it at the garage sale when I thought, wait a minute, that may be useful on knife work. It consists of a spray bottle of lubricant to spray on the sanding pads so they don't load up, a 4 oz. bottle of liquid polish, and 2 double sided sanding pads (4 different grits) numbered 1 thru 4. I tried it on an old knife to see how it would work and it seemed to work great. The sanding pads are numbered 1 thru 4, you would start with 1 being the coarsest and work up thru 4 which is the finest and then go to the polishing compound. The polishing compound is very fine, being similar to Flitz or Simichrome or possibly even finer. It takes the nicks and dings out of the nickle silver bolsters with the sanding pads, and they polished up nicely with the compound. The sanding pads can be used to wet sand minor scratches from blades also. If you have one of these kits laying around, try it.

[tongueriver]

Jim, what product do you think would be fine enough to polish my plastic sunglasses? I think simichrome is too coarse.

[OLDE CUTLER]

Jim, what product do you think would be fine enough to polish my plastic sunglasses? I think simichrome is too coarse.

At the employer that I retired from years ago we sold a product called Novus plastic polish #2 fine scratch remover. We had a bottle in the shop and used it on glasses and the guys that had motorcycles used it on their face shields. I used it on plastic lens prescription glasses and it worked good. Novus makes several grades of polish and it comes in 2 oz. bottles.

[Railsplitter]

Jim, what product do you think would be fine enough to polish my plastic sunglasses? I think simichrome is too coarse.

I'm not Jim but I've used a Micro Mesh kit on Vulcanite pipe stems and it worked wonders. Took them from an oxidized grey color to a mirror finished slick black. I think I spent a little over an hour on each stem working through the 9 grits but the results were well worth the effort.

I have the soft touch pads but they come in a variety of options.

[tongueriver]

Thanks to both of you for the tips!

[Sharpnshinyknives]

Our neighborhood garage sales are coming up in a few weeks, so I have been sorting thru things and throwing stuff into boxes that it has come time to part with. One thing I ran across that I had forgotten about was from a few years back. My wifes c ar had the ugly yellow tinged headlights, so I had bought a Turtle Wax kit to re polish and renew the lenses. It didn't take much to get them clear and shiny again, so there was plenty of the kit leftover. I was going to throw it in one of the boxes and put a dollar on it at the garage sale when I thought, wait a minute, that may be useful on knife work. It consists of a spray bottle of lubricant to spray on the sanding pads so they don't load up, a 4 oz. bottle of liquid polish, and 2 double sided sanding pads (4 different grits) numbered 1 thru 4. I tried it on an old knife to see how it would work and it seemed to work great. The sanding pads are numbered 1 thru 4, you would start with 1 being the coarsest and work up thru 4 which is the finest and then go to the polishing compound. The polishing compound is very fine, being similar to Flitz or Simichrome or possibly even finer. It takes the nicks and dings out of the nickle silver bolsters with the sanding pads, and they polished up nicely with the compound. The sanding pads can be used to wet sand minor scratches from blades also. If you have one of these kits laying around, try it.

IMG_2747.JPG

Very interesting that you used a car care product. I started using Griot’s Garage polishing compound last year on a few knives that had a lot of micro scratches from having been stored for years in a tackle box lose . Here is a picture of my set up. I use the Griot’s polisher since Richard Griot designed this so that it wouldn’t burn through the clear coat on a car. Use it and the polishing compounds either for the paint surface or use the polishing compound for glass, they have that also. This set up worked great on some acrylic handled knives that were scratched so badly they looked cloudy. Brought them back to a new looking condition.
Great suggestion. I have a Griots headlight restoration kit that I didn’t even think about using.
SSk

[Quick Steel]

A truly informative thread. Thank you gentlemen. I am going to use some of the items mentioned.

[OLDE CUTLER]

Yesterday I noticed that I had somehow gotten a nasty deep scratch on the face of my watch crystal. These are probably poly carbonate, or something close to headlight lenses on cars. So I decided to try the Turtle Wax lens renewal kit shown above on the watch. I went thru the 4 grits of sanding with the lubricant on the pads and then the polish. In about 5 minutes the crystal showed no trace of the scratch.
Before

After

[treefarmer]

Impressed!
Treefarmer

[WillyCamaro]

Super impressed
Looks like i'll be doing it to my watch face also. Great i found this thread