"Didn't they put that protective coating on them for a reason?"
Uh, talk about bursting my bubble. I wanted them to be so beautiful and all I ended up with is unprotected metal that the knife manufacturer didn't intend for me to have.
The good thing about no coating is it makes it chopper better from reduced drag from the coating. If it’s polished up some so it’s slicker, it’ll chop even better. The coating is mostly there for people who don’t take care of their knives to make maintenance easier, and to reduce shop hour time by lowering the finishing time needed to polish up a blade.
They are now naked. And.... well I wish that I owned a buffing wheel and a pound of jewelers rouge. I'd try my hand at butchering a finish of sorts into the metal now that I have exposed the protected metal.
Since they’re bare, you may as well have a try of polishing them up. You can work on them little by little to polish them. Keep them by the TV with progressive grits of sandpaper and work on them during commercial breaks on TV. You can get really fine grit sandpaper in the automotive section at Walmart or wherever. You can also usually find a knockoff Dremel type tool at an import tool sale like they have in parking lots, tents or semis from time to time, or a Harbor Freight or similar store. My brother got a variable speed one at a tool sale for like $20. You could use something like that to polish it.
For a little more ($30-$40) you can get a cheap imported bench grinder. Then you can get the different 3M abrasive and buffing wheels, and polish it all the way up to mirror like your big custom bowie if you wanted. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />
