Polishing on a Lathe - Ballpark Parameters

Hi all.

I have a small job to do and thought I'd try my hand at finishing it out with polishing to get a nice, smoother finish. I have my lathe set up, and all of my shafts are cut to +.0005 to +.001 within the finish diameter.

I have nice long thin strips of 60 grit emery cloth here.

Now, what rpm should I be setting the machine at and how long should it take to remove .001" off of 1045 steel? (my max rpm, btw, is 3,500 - but I'm nowhere near comfortable leaning over the machine at that speed with an unbalanced lathe dog).

I originally had the machine spinning at 600 rpm and it took FOREVER to do one shaft. It's a good thing I have nothing else lined up to do.

Following some advice here and on some other, lesser, forums, I upped the rpm to 2000 but it still seems to be taking a while - probably 1-2 minutes to knock off .0001".

Am I doing something wrong or am I just expecting too much? I have 19 shafts left to do and boy, do I not want to spend a lot of time just polishing (if I have to, I will. Just a preference).

What's the surface finish before you start polishing? 1045 can be hard. Has your piece(s) been hardened? You might look into a Cogsdill single point burnishing tool, could be used on other finishing jobs as well.

Dick Z

it was pre-hardened CR. I got it finished, took a long dang time. It was a smooth surface finish. That burnish tool looks neat though.