Sidearms & Scatterguns Need Laser Etching Buffed Out on Knife --Recommendations?

[Strykervet]

Maybe someone on here is an accomplished enough knife maker to do it? To buff out existing laser etching and re-polish the SS blade? It's not deep at all and I don't think you can feel it.

Nice knife, not super expensive or anything but it has meaning to me and I want it done right. I want it to look like it's NIB without the engraving. Don't wanna pay a fortune for what should be a simple job to someone with experience.

If there's anyone on here with pictures of their work I'll consider you if you PM me with 'em.

 

[Strykervet]

Nobody?

 

[Fig]

QED

It will take an hour or two in order to completely polish out the laser engraving, but if you use polishing compound it's not like you can screw up the steel. Doing it any faster and it may not look NIB. Do it this way and it's almost impossible to screw it up...

 

[Unknown]

IIRC, the knife you are referring to isn't laser etched, it is electro etched where a decal with the acid is applied to the knife, and then electricity is applied to the knife. I don't think the electro etching goes as deep into the steel as a laser etch would.

My guess is that the best way would require hand rubbing the blade with varying grits of abrasive paper. You can buy the abrasive papers at most decent auto parts stores. Getting both sides of the blade to have the same finish will take some serious elbow grease.. But it can be done.

If you are going to do it yourself, a brushed finish can be achieved by always having the strokes with the abrasive going the same direction. If you want a really polished finish, change direction of your strokes each time you change grit on the paper. That way, you will be able to see when you have all the scratches from the previous grit of paper rubbed out.

I used to hand polish the knives I made this way down to 2000 grit, and is quite time consuming, but looks really good.

I have never tried to rub out the electro etching but I suspect it isn't too deep, so it might be much easier than I suspect.