Idiots Guide To Polishing Stainless Trim
Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2024 5:14 pm
The idiot in question here is me, as I have never polished anything in my life but watched a couple you tube videos and decided I would give it a go.
Much uming and ahing, and eventually I bit the bullet and bought a bunch of stuff from a site call polish up. Cost was $400 inc shipping and for that I have all the various cutting compounds, 200mm polishing wheels from the roughest (treated sisal), to the smoothest (swansdown which is essentially flannelette sheets), in multiples of each so as to not cross contaminate between polishing stainless, steel, chrome and aluminium. Put the various compounds and wheels in separate old pillow cases. Also got a 14mm attachment to screw the wheels onto my variable speed polisher which I originally got to use with shrinking disks.
First thing - make a bracket to bolt the polisher to my bench which was made out of scrap from the rotisserie build. Quick test polishing up one my cheap dollies with grey and blue compounds. First lesson (still being learnt), must sand out all the scratches, not just the deep ones, as what was not visible after a quick run over with 320 in the DA, becomes very visible when polished.
Jumped straight in and grabbed a bit of bling off the car. This piece has a dimple in it which I want to try and get out. Got a thin piece of hardwood in the vice and gave it a few taps with a soft mallet which ended up a wavy mess worse than the dimple ever was. Pretty annoyed I had ruined this piece so no progess pic of this state.
Decided what I need is a planishing hammer, which I don't have, so I came up with a low rent solution. Bit of machine oil down the shaft, set to hammer and off I go. Really have no idea what I'm doing and really hard to operate drill, hold piece, and make sure I'm sandwiching it between the two bits of wood, so potential to totally cock this up are high. But pressure was light and after much tapping, a quick sand and polish it looks like this. Probably should have stopped here but I thought the shrinking disk might help even things out even more. It did, but not as intended. Too much heat, not enough lubricant, galling. Nothing to lose now, went aggressive, sanding the area with 120, 180, 180DA, 240DA, 320DA, 320/400/600/800/120 wet and dry, each grit spreading the sanded area bigger and bigger as I feathered the edges and sanded the previous grit out. Finally onto the polishing. Started with grey (fast cut) compound on the treated sisal wheel. This really does most of the work and is the equivalent of blocking a car when prepping for paint.
Then onto white (SS) compound, with a white stitch, then a loose leaf, and finally the swansdown. These three final steps take very little time.
Here is the result. It's good enough for me, but for a great finish you can see that I needed to spend more time on the cut stage. As I have subsequently found on the few other pieces I have done, sometimes that means even going back to the DA to remove scratches that you thought were gone.
Much uming and ahing, and eventually I bit the bullet and bought a bunch of stuff from a site call polish up. Cost was $400 inc shipping and for that I have all the various cutting compounds, 200mm polishing wheels from the roughest (treated sisal), to the smoothest (swansdown which is essentially flannelette sheets), in multiples of each so as to not cross contaminate between polishing stainless, steel, chrome and aluminium. Put the various compounds and wheels in separate old pillow cases. Also got a 14mm attachment to screw the wheels onto my variable speed polisher which I originally got to use with shrinking disks.
First thing - make a bracket to bolt the polisher to my bench which was made out of scrap from the rotisserie build. Quick test polishing up one my cheap dollies with grey and blue compounds. First lesson (still being learnt), must sand out all the scratches, not just the deep ones, as what was not visible after a quick run over with 320 in the DA, becomes very visible when polished.
Jumped straight in and grabbed a bit of bling off the car. This piece has a dimple in it which I want to try and get out. Got a thin piece of hardwood in the vice and gave it a few taps with a soft mallet which ended up a wavy mess worse than the dimple ever was. Pretty annoyed I had ruined this piece so no progess pic of this state.
Decided what I need is a planishing hammer, which I don't have, so I came up with a low rent solution. Bit of machine oil down the shaft, set to hammer and off I go. Really have no idea what I'm doing and really hard to operate drill, hold piece, and make sure I'm sandwiching it between the two bits of wood, so potential to totally cock this up are high. But pressure was light and after much tapping, a quick sand and polish it looks like this. Probably should have stopped here but I thought the shrinking disk might help even things out even more. It did, but not as intended. Too much heat, not enough lubricant, galling. Nothing to lose now, went aggressive, sanding the area with 120, 180, 180DA, 240DA, 320DA, 320/400/600/800/120 wet and dry, each grit spreading the sanded area bigger and bigger as I feathered the edges and sanded the previous grit out. Finally onto the polishing. Started with grey (fast cut) compound on the treated sisal wheel. This really does most of the work and is the equivalent of blocking a car when prepping for paint.
Then onto white (SS) compound, with a white stitch, then a loose leaf, and finally the swansdown. These three final steps take very little time.
Here is the result. It's good enough for me, but for a great finish you can see that I needed to spend more time on the cut stage. As I have subsequently found on the few other pieces I have done, sometimes that means even going back to the DA to remove scratches that you thought were gone.