Polishing picks with leather

[TJ Verrett]

I hope this is the proper place for this. I come from a wood carving background. In this hobby we're taught how to sharpen our tools. One technique we use is stropping. This is done after the use of stones, stropping is removing burrs left on the metal. Having said all of this,I discovered that the stropping technique can be used to polish picks. How is this done? After you've done all of your sanding,you'll get a piece of leather with some compound. Rub the compound liberally on your leather then vigorously rub your pick on the leather.Soon you'll begin to get an extremely smooth and mirror like surface. Now then you can do this on a bench grinder.Just buy some leather sandwich multiple pieces together after applying glue cut to shape,drill the hole, and attach to your grinder.Or you can just buy a leather wheel for stropping and put it on your grinder. Also buy some compound for the leather and you're good to go. Happy picking.

[Jacob Morgan]

Welcome to the forum.

What is the name of the compound?

[TJ Verrett]

Look up Flexcut.com then look for stropping compound.Happy picking

[AngryHatter]

My picks tend to wear on the right side.
I could even them but that would make them significantly shorter...so I buy new picks.

I get about a year or two at most before I have to replace a pick.

[femurat]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

To polish my homemade picks I use a polishing compound and a fabric wheel on a "grinder".
To polish my wooden chisels tip I use the same compound on a piece of leather glued to a block of wood.
Dunno if there's a difference based on what's under the polishing compound. I think that all the work is done by the abrasive media in the compound.
But you got me curios: I'll try a leather wheel when I find one. Maybe it's quicker than the fabric one.

Cheers

[CaptHook]

You can, I don't think you need to though. I polish with sandpaper up to 2000 grit, then use some Flitz metal polish on a paper towel and get pretty close to a mirror finish. If I wanted to go finer grit papers then into micro polishing films I could probably get it to a mirror. But that's not really needed.

[ragebot]

When I read this I was reminded of a youtube vid about lockpicking using a nice store bought set of picks. " I polish with sandpaper up to 2000 grit, then use some Flitz metal polish on a paper towel and get pretty close to a mirror finish. If I wanted to go finer grit papers then into micro polishing films I could probably get it to a mirror. But that's not really needed."


The vid basically said "I may not be able to pick a lock; but I look good doing it."

[jwrm22]

Thanks for the idea.

I've polished my picks before but it was very slow and boring so I don't bother anymore.
A polishing wheel would still be something I want to invest in but that's far off at the moment.