Ring Polishing

Today I decided to get organized to clean up the inside of rings after soldering. There is usually a little solder and quite a bit of fire scale etc.
Fire scale is probably best removed by pickling.There are various commercial solutions available. I have used a mixture of sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide which seems to work fairly well. As for solder, hopefully, as you get better at it there will be less to remove. It is far better to take your time soldering and not make a big mess, than to invent ways to remove a lot of excess solder. I have also started using some stainless rings which turn blue-black when heated, and also need to be re-polished.

This is a ring I made some time ago which has a lot of mess inside to clean up.
First I used a high speed rotary tool to remove the excess solder. These tools work well but the sanding and grinding attachments seem to always be rather coarse for jewellery making.

This picture shows where the solder has been quickly removed but leaving a pretty rough surface.

Here are some basic polishing mandrels I made. They are 10mm wooden dowels with sandpaper or material stuck to them with double sided tape.

They range from 320 grit up to 2000 grit, then Hessian webbing and finally tee-shirt material. The hessian is too coarse and a soft canvas, like a painters drop sheet or calico would be better for this job. These sandpapers are waterproof so they can be used wet or dry, and cost about $1.20 per sheet from auto accessory type shops.(Super cheap Auto) It's the same stuff they use for sanding car paint prior to polishing. Jewelers supplier have polishing sandpaper up to 8000 grit. I used them in the chuck of a small electric drill. The black on the Tee shirt material is polish residue. I used an excellent liquid polish callse "Brasso".

The photo doesn't look too impressive because the light just highlights the few minute remaining scratches from the rotary tool. It is very much shiniernow, heaps of reflections, and good enough for the inside of a brass, copper or nickel ring.

So my advice to myself and anyone else who is interested,DON'T scratch your metal while forming the ring,DON'T have much excess solder to remove, go easy with the rotary tool, it scratches the metal very quickly. The longer you polish, the shinier it gets,how much time can you spare?
Also got a new set of files. I haven't tried them yet but they look good. The old ones have been getting lost and broken lately.