Sharpening Or Polishing Stitching Irons, Pricking Irons Or Chisels

[Ole South]

Wet/dry paper (NOT sandpaper) when soaked will adhere to almost any stiffener without bunching if you don't use excessive pressure or over use it. The binder adhesive used keeps the paper backing pretty stiff, surface tension does the rest.

You CAN glue strips to a feeler gauge or wooden if you want keep it from moving but I've found just folding a wetted strip and laying thin fairly rigid backer won't cause any problems. You'll probably be working up and down the length of the tooth (rather than the width) anyway to reduce friction once the tool is polished. Thus you'll not encounter any bunching.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Ole South

[ContactCement]

Wet dry sandpaper glued to a cheap thin metal 6" ruler should do the trick for larger spacing.

[YinTx]

I did end up with some jeweler's files, then on to very fine sand paper.  This took care of the rough profile where the iron contacts the leather, and then I just kind of stropped the tines with thin leather to finish up.  Worked ok after that!  Thanks for all the suggestions, got me where I needed to be.

YinTx

[JKHelms]

I use a buffing wheel on my bench grinder to polish mine 

also good for razor knife blades and my leather knifes.

just be sure the wheel is turning away from you and be careful. 

[ContactCement]

A stiff Revlon diamond fingernail file wrapped with wet dry sandpaper worked great to hone my Craftool Pro Fine Diamond stitching chisel 8 tooth. It looks like you have some heavy burrs or bent tips. When using buffers or grinders take care and dont overheat the metal.

[johnv474]

I have used Mothers magnesium and aluminum wheel polish to polish tools, including pricking irons. I picked it up in the auto section of Walmart but I imagine any polishing compound for metals would work. 

 

I dip the pricking iron into this paste and then use a fleece wheel attached to a Dremel-type rotary tool to hit each side of each tooth.  I leave the tool set to the sloweat speed because it flicks polish everywhere.  I also use this setup for polishing other tools. 

 

I don't know if the results are perfect but it certainly works for my purposes.