Thank you for the tips, knifeguy. I do all my grinding and stripping outdoors for the reasons you mentioned. I did not remove the scales from my Swamp Rat HRLM or the Busses I stripped and/or polished. It was suggested to me by Jerry Busse at Blade when I showed him some of my work. The idea was that I could then polish the tang areas better. You will notice that I did not grind the rough areas of the flat sides, only the spine and tang edges. I left the natural dimpled steel and just buffed it bright with the Scotchbrite wheels on the unground flat sides. This project would have taken all day if I had decided to polish the flats with my belts as I did on my HRLM. I was looking for a quicker way that would yeild results acceptable to most folks on the forum without requiring much grinding. That was the idea behind the Scotchbrite wheels. The blade got warm but not hot during any of the operations I have shown, but care needs to be taken as you point out. I am new to all this, so any and all suggestions are much appreciated.