Independents

DonCorson
[AHCI]
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Polishing

Hi Graham,
It sounds strange, but you always use something softer than what you want to polish as a substrate.
The polishing medium itself, like diamantine, which is aluminum oxide, is quite hard.
Imagine you want to polish steel.
You take the diamantine slurry, smear it on a brass or bronze substrate, and then apply that to the steel.
The diamantine gets driven into the surface of the brass and stays put there, the tips of the pieces of diamantine then do the polishing of the steel.
This is often seen in old clocks that don't have jewels, but where the pivots run in brass bushings.
If the bushings get full of dust it can happen that the steel pivots are cut through and the bushings remain in good shape.
If the dust particles are very hard they will abrade the steel while just populating the surface of the bushing and not otherwise harming it too much.
Of course one then needs to replace not only the pivot, but also the bushing, otherwise it will keep up it's good work on the new pivot too
The same holds for wood when polishing.
You learn something new every day.
Don