Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Don’t ever use a steel wire wheel on stainless that you plan to use in salt water. Use a stainless wire wheel. But I wouldn’t use either.
If you’re going to do this by hand use hand files. A small round chainsaw file works well for the ends of the slots to radius them, then use a small flat bastard file to round over the long parts of the slots and the perimeter. The bigger the flat file for the perimeter the better, so you might be buying several files but they’re cheap. Do yourself a favor and use a vice.
If you want to passivate the stainless after all your hard work you can buy some granulated citric acid used for canning and make a strong solution, then soak the plate in that and use a red scotch brite to clean off any staining. The citric acid will neutralize any ferrous metal residue and it won’t attack any of the other components/alloys of the stainless steel.
I know you want to do this on the cheap and all, but the most effective way to round over the outer edges of a plate is to use a 4-1/2” 80 grit flap disc grinder wheel on a small right angle grinder. It takes only a minutes.
If you’re going to do this by hand use hand files. A small round chainsaw file works well for the ends of the slots to radius them, then use a small flat bastard file to round over the long parts of the slots and the perimeter. The bigger the flat file for the perimeter the better, so you might be buying several files but they’re cheap. Do yourself a favor and use a vice.
If you want to passivate the stainless after all your hard work you can buy some granulated citric acid used for canning and make a strong solution, then soak the plate in that and use a red scotch brite to clean off any staining. The citric acid will neutralize any ferrous metal residue and it won’t attack any of the other components/alloys of the stainless steel.
I know you want to do this on the cheap and all, but the most effective way to round over the outer edges of a plate is to use a 4-1/2” 80 grit flap disc grinder wheel on a small right angle grinder. It takes only a minutes.