Hello everybody! This is my first time, so be gentle. Well Ive been
having a little problem. I was polishing some parts, first with
tripoly, cleaned it, then polished with rouge. The problem is, when I
polished with rouge, I get this black residue on it, not everywhere
just in a few places. I was removing this with a cloth (my shirt) in
order to see what was happening. The residue didnt allow me to reach
the area below. What is causing this black residue???
And how can I prevent it.
thank you fellow metalworkers.
The black stuff is excess polish. Remove it with a buff rake. If you
don’t have a buff rake, I encourage you to get one. People use other
things, like hacksaw blades, to clean their buffs, but a buff rake is
safer, IMHO.
Elaine
Elaine Luther
Metalsmith, Certified PMC Instructor
http://www.CreativeTextureTools.com ™
Hard to Find Tools for Metal Clay
The black stuff is excess polish. Remove it with a buff rake
A quick read of this advice might leave someone with the idea that
you would use a buff rake or a hacksaw blade to remove excess
compound-- from your jewelry! So just in case anyone fairly new at
this read it that way-- the buff rake, etc, are to remove excess
polishing compound from the buff. However, it is pretty common to
get black build-up on the piece you are polishing. Wipe it off with
paper towel, cloth, or a fingernail. If it won’t come right off, use
a de-greasing cleaner-- Windex, Simple Green, Fantastic, or
whatever. If the wheel is gunky, rake it, but actually sometimes I
find that I get build-up when there is too little compound on the
wheel. If you find yourself pushing harder to get polishing action,
it generally means you need to apply more polish.
Good luck!
Noel
Be very careful when using the buff rake. The polishing wheel has a
tendency to pull the rake into the wheel.
I like Noel, find that I can eliminate the black build up by adding
more rouge to the wheel. I also find that if the metal is very warm
from polishing on the Tripoli wheel the black build up does not
occur. It really forms when polishing a cold piece of metal. You
can heat the metal up if you keep working it against the wheel.
Lee Epperson