daguerreotype plate polishing tip

It has always been suggested to me that I hand-polish my plates after
electric buffing on a red-rouge polishing pad. I tried an experiment
yesterday that yielded great results! Here's my new polishing method:
1. Heat plate with blowtorch for ~ 30s
2. Buff on stitched muslin wheel with red jeweler's rouge (Dialux)
3. Buff on unstitched muslin wheel with blue jeweler's rouge
4. Clean edges
5. Buff by hand on velvet buffing board using powdered black Iron Oxide.

I read about black iron oxide from the amateur astronomers that polish
their own mirrors for telescopes. They do the process wet using a
slurry of black iron oxide but it works very well dry also! These were
my best polished plates ever and they were so much faster than my old
plates that I severely overexposed both plates yesterday! Wheee!

-Jonathan

-- 
http://photographs.danforthsource.com