would using a lense cloth make a difference versus using an old cut up white shirt? I ask this because a shirt is the last thing i'd use on a camera lense and I see a perfect mirror polish on say a 1911 in the same fashion.

Steel is considerably harder than anti-reflection lens coating.

Make sure you keep an oil film on stainless.
It is especially vulnerable to the chloride ions in your sweat.

Leaves a white powder and pits in the stainless.

StainLESS not stainNONE.

uhm ok. So what about using a lense cloth with Mother's polish versus a shirt? I get the steel is harder part but mirror bright finishes tend to be very vulnerable to scratches is why I asked.

Are there scratches?
If there are not any scratches you do not need to polish anything.

Just wipe it down with a lightly oiled cotton cloth.

It is not all that complicated.

What I am getting at, is I want to put a mirror polish on a matte stainless handgun just because. Can I achieve a rock solid flawless finish using a lense cloth or is the steel hard enough that the cotton wont scratch it like it does a glass lense.


I guess what I am concerned about is small scratches showing up in the finish.

Cape Cod polishing Co. has everything you need. I use a kit at work from 3M, with several step buffing pads. Never done it by hand. I use an angle grinder for  my process. I have wiped with my tshirt on completed projects, sometimes it does leave faint swirls. I have not tried a lens  cloth.

You will never keep surfaces flat without using a flat surface to polish against.

Ok awesome. Getting somewhere and thank you. So what do you mean? a piece of wood with lense cloth mounted against it?

and thanks for the input

Flat.
At least wood.

In many cases larger areas are often easier to polish by moving the object (like a slide) over the abrasive.
Unless it is very close to being completed you might want to check into using finer grades of wet-or-dry paper with a water lubricant.
A glass plate you 'stick' the paper to with water works well to keep it flat.
Move the slide back and forth keeping even pressure.
Check frequently to see if the scratch pattern is uniform.
If it is already reasonable polished you could likely start around 400 grit and work up from there.
Auto body repair shops are a good source of very fine Carborundum paper (the black wet-or-dry metal working stuff).

It goes very very fine.
Some of the finest grades switch to other abrasives.

You can find things like 20,000 if you want to look.

Another thing that works well is diamond paste on glass or a steel flat.
You have to keep your on on the surface since it wears also.
It will slowly dish out.

McGuire's and compounds like that are the final step.

You are thinking about it completely wrong.

When you polish something you are scratching it over and over again, glass is much harder than stainless (most stainless is fairly soft compaired to a lot of other metals used in firearms), the lense cloth is designed not to scratch, just to remove oils from the glass (without scratching it)

To polish you progressively scratch the material with a finer compound until you cannot see individual scratches with the naked eye. Get a few buffing wheels and some jewlers polish and start working it slowly, clean the gun, and change the wheel each time you change polish. Or just go with the old shirt and some different polishes (toothpaste works sometimes but wear safety glasses...). A finished surface needs to be treated with care, getting to that point you are litterally scratching the heck out of the item.

Just using a buffing wheel takes a huge amount of skill to keep flat surfaces flat.

There are plenty of easily available abrasives, lubricants, and flat enough surfaces to work against.

Unless you want a 'melt job' of a few years ago with rounded edges use a flat surface to polish against.

A buffing wheel is going to take a lot of time depending on how well the steel starts.

'Lens cloth' is often used on coated lenses (think camera lenses).
The coating are both very thin and soft.
They are sometimes thinner than a wavelength of light.

I polished a matte stainless Taurus single action a few years back. I used Flitz and some tshirt and finished it up Starbrite polish. Mirror is subjective, but it came out dang nice. Took some time, but I was in no hurry and took my time. Well please with the results.

Lucky for you revolvers have few flat surfaces and crisp corners on them.

I use a piece of marble countertop as my flat surface and wet sanding paper to take it to 2000 grit paper. After that, some mothers and a microfiber cloth will bring stainless to a mirror polish using a light finger touch.

A scrap of stone, a piece of thick glass, the top of a table-saw (watch for rust!).

Something that is KNOWN to be flat.

I also use a nice heavy piece of glass when polishing flats, and progressively finer paper, with some oil.  Prob is on a super slick finish like that is it is going to scratch very easily, even out of a holster.  Knock it down a bit, it will look better for alot longer.  Fun project just the same.

Fine car polishing cloths are what you want.  The guys that sell Wenol use them in their demos and they also sell them.  

They are kinda like a diaper, but even softer on one side.  

https://www.amazon.com/Detailers-Choice-2-10-Diaper-Polishing/dp/B000EFGWFI?tag=vglnk-c102-20

Lens cleaning paper and clothe are used to protect the coating on the glass not the glass itself.

Anti reflection coatings on high quality lenses are often multiple layers each very few atoms thick and often very soft.

Your fingernail can damage some of them.

I used to work with a guy who did glass blasting to make things like wedding toast glasses and award plaques.

I have a 'blank' he gave me that is about 8 inches x 10 inches and nearly 3/4 inch thick.

The faces are polished dead flat.

It is an incredible surface to use when you need 'flat.'

If you place it on another flat surface with a few drops of water it must be slid off the edge.

You will not be able to lift it off.

Even with a glass handling suction cup.