TOPIC: How To Remove Weathering/Paint w/o a Lathe

First off this assumes that the part of the hilt you want the weathering/paint off of is uniformly circular. This will not work w/o modifications on irregular parts of a hilt. For the purpose of this brief tutorial the PVC pipe is standing in for the hilt and the sandpaper is facing the wrong way for the purpose of illustration.




1) Depending on the job at hand you may want to start out with a harsher grit such as 100 if you're clearing out a gouge or some heavy weathering. Personally I start out with 220 grit because it closely emulates what SF uses on their hilts.




2) Take your hilt (PVC standing in for the hilt) and place it over the sandpaper where you want the weathering/pain removed.



3) Next make a wrap the sandpaper around the hilt to make a tight sleeve.




4) Now keep the hand grasping the sandpaper still while you use the other hand to torque the hilt so that it spins under the sandpaper. You'll repeat this process several times as you pause to look at the hilt to make sure that you're applying even pressure along the length of the hilt for an even finish. It's important to keep the sandpaper with the grain in a linear, horizontal direction and to torque the hilt in the same direction (clockwise/counterclockwise). If you slide the sandpaper up and down the hilt against the grain the finish will be very scratchy.

Pre Sanding:




Post Sanding:

Not sure what benefit there is to photographing the sandpaper backward, but other than that - *thumbs up* - pretty much how I got the brushed finish on my Graflex.

Folks wanting a polished hilt can go a few steps further, working their way up to 400, 600, even 1000 grit, then achieving a near-mirror-finish with some aluminum polish.

I didn't want to scratch the PVC. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯