The Armour Archive

My standard "shop finish" has always been a fine wire wheel, followed by a touch of emery cloth. It left me with a nice clean mild polish.
I'm doing a norman helmet for a friend (long overdue birthday present), I've been under a lot of stress this last month so I nneded a nice mindless job to keep me from cracking last weekend
I went past palm sander to fine wire wheel, then threw a felt wheel on the grinder and dressed it with black emery. The shine is tremendous but I am seeing a lot of pinhole sized pits in the steel, I'm planning on continuing through white compound to get rid of them.
So - at what point should I stop seeing imperfections in the steel?

You've got to grind or sand to the base of the pits you're seeing. I'm curious how they got there in the first place. Was there any grit on your planishing hammer?

My planishing hammers all seem to be in good order, I just wasn't sure if hot rolled mild actually comes with that many surface imperfections since as I said this is the first time I've taken a piece past wire wheel / emery cloth / fine steel wool and oil