Product Description
Unsurpassed for polishing male slides during the fitting process. You can also use these papers to fit our Finial Capped Ferrule Plugs to your female ferrules. As another use, the green polishing paper can be used between dip finishing coats to remove small drips and sags in the finish, while the light blue paper can be used after the final coat to more slowly achieve a similar goal without harming the finish … you’ll still need to buff with a rottenstone slurry and then bring back the luster, if that’s your taste, with a wax or other polish.
Also, if you want to create your own Blue-Line hardware, you need these papers. First, find components with incised grooves…Broad Winding Checks, Finial Capped Ferrule Plugs, many of our reel seats, etc. Polish the part…make a small mandrel to hold the part (for seats or checks) in your lathe; carefully spin the part through the three grades of polishing paper to achieve a high polish. Lathe safety is entirely your responsibility! Rinse & dry, then blue the part. After the blue is deep and dry, re-chuck the part in your lathe and use the medium & fine (gray & blue) papers backed with something stiff – a popsicle stick, or cardboard/posterboard – then re-polish…the medium grit quickly removes the oxidized surface from the bulk of the component; the fine paper brings back the high polish. Because the papers are backed, they should not descend into the incised grooves, or the recesses of knurled areas, which leaves those depths deeply blued. Rinse & dry the part carefully, then clear coat the part to protect the contrasting, two-tone finish.
Three sheets each (coarse, medium, & fine) per set; all are exceptionally fine.
Hi Folks,
Recently a client, Rob, wrote: Wish me luck on the ferrule fitting. I’m a pretty good rodmaker, but ferrule fitting vexes me to no end.
I responded, but before you read the response – which pushes the ease of using Ferrule Lapping Files – please remember that there are MANY ways to skin a cat. The polishing papers sold on this page are great tools sold at a great price. Compared to a set of lapping files they’re a bit over 10% of the expense and you can achieve the same basic result, which makes them extremely valuable as an option for the occasional rodmaker. Even for a rodmaker with lapping files, the finest (blue) paper can be nice if you need to sweeten the fit just a smidgen after using the #8 cut file. If you are planning to lap using only the polishing papers, then the bit I wrote below has a great tip … if you’re using a lathe to spin the ferrule.
So, here’s my response to Rob:
Ferrule Fitting….are you using lapping files? In both cuts? I take males down to a ‘rough’ fit with the #6…usually to the point where they’ll seat full depth, or just shy of full depth by 1/8” or so…always testing the fit after every pass of the file, or every other pass on the initial passes of sizes #13 and up…always removing swarf before testing the fit so you don’t score the inside of the female. Once darn close with the #6 cut, usually just one or two passes with the #8 makes the fit smooth as butter. You can achieve similar results with polishing papers, but not nearly so quickly…and for most folks, not so ‘evenly’ along the length of the slide. The fact that the teeth on the files are fixed to an immoveable object (the body of the file blade) and it’s easy to keep that file blade tangent to the slide while “sliding” the file (from the shoulder, down the slide, and off the end), keeps the material removal even and thus the fit is very even across the length of the slide. There shouldn’t be much in the way of gaps and high spots such as you can get when using sandpaper which tends to ‘gouge’ the slide (at a micro level) where the paper is pinched in your fingers, which themselves are conforming the paper to the shape of the more or less round & squishy objects…again, this is in contrast to the file which remains crisp and flat as it is maneuvered down the length of the slide. If you do use polishing papers, it’s best to wrap them over a popsicle stick to give the papers rigidity, comparable to the files. Of course this only works with a lathe…if you’re working off the lathe, that’s a separate issue. Really hope this make sense. Sometimes explaining with words is tougher than actually going through the motions.
And here are those files, if you’re curious:
