And Polishing Other Metals
I received an e-mail from a man named Steve and I replied to it. This is how it went... Steve said: I would love to learn how to do this. Always seemed too daunting of a procedure to me. Is it easier than I imagined? Restoring stainless (or other metal) trim is not a difficult task if you follow the steps, but it is time consuming and requires patience. To polishing any metal, you first need to understand why you are doing what you will be doing. Let's take a piece (of stainless or other metals) that has a mirror like shine. When you look at it you see yourself undistorted. If the piece is curved, your image is distorted like a funhouse mirror. If the piece has a sharp crease, you could see two images reflecting in different directions. Essentially, a dent is like the funhouse mirror, and a scratch is like a small sharp crease. With many small scratches, an image reflects in so many different directions the reflection appears dull. Our goal is to get all of the reflections to reflect in the same direction, which will give you a mirror like finish. These next steps could serve as a guide through trim restoration / metal polishing. This is how I do it, some people may do it other ways but I was able to get great results like this: Note: The assumption is made that you will work safely. When welding – you would wear a welding helmet. When sanding, you will wear safety goggles and appropriate face masks, etc. Step 1 - Assess and repair your stainless If you have stainless that is torn, cut, or has holes, repairs must be made. Tears, cuts, and holes would have to be welded to make a solid piece to work with. If you do not have a welder or are not confident in your metal repair abilities, a local welding shop can often make such repairs for just a few dollars. Step 2 - Make your dents small Here, you need to get the metal piece as close to its original shape as possible. To do this, you get to be creative. If a dent can be removed by simply pressing it, go for it. Often there are sharp creases where there shouldn't be any. Most times you can remove these creases with a small hammer and a dolly. A gentle curve dolly can be made from a smooth piece of pipe. Sharp details can be brought back with angle iron or chisels acting as dollies or shaping tools. Ultimately, you are eliminating any low spots. If you hit the piece from the back side and a tiny dimple extends past the face of the metal (creating a small high spot), do not worry. We will address this in our next step. Step 3 - File off imperfections Any tiny dimple that extend beyond the face of the piece (a high spot) can be removed with a fine metal file. **PLEASE NOTE: When filing, sanding, and polishing do so in one direction. It allows the reflection that will occur later on to reflect in one direction. Step 4 - Use sand paper The file (when removing the high spots) left scratches. We need to progressively make the scratches smaller by sanding then buffing the scratches out. We can start out with a 200 grit sand paper, sanding in one direction until the entire surface of the piece looks like a continuous grain "brushed stainless" appearance. This now aligns all of the scratches in the piece in one direction. Note: Use an appropriate sanding block whenever possible to eliminate small high spots, detect low spots, and avoid sanding a groove the shape of your finger into the piece. Step 5 - Repeat Step 4 with 500, 1000, 1500, and the finest that can be found The finer the scratches become the better the finish will be when you buff your work. (Be sure to sand your entire piece, not just the repair with the finer sand paper.) Step 6 - Use a stiff buffing wheel with a coarse grit rouge (buffing compound) Note: When handling metal trim pieces, it often has sharp edges. If you are holding the piece to a motorized buffing wheel, and if it should slip from your hands, you could get cut. Wear gloves (of some sort) to prevent you from getting cut, bleeding all over, and creating more clean up later. Also Some fabric of the buffing wheel or compound may fly off when the motor is turned on and you start to press the metal to the wheel. Just a reminder on the safety thing… Wear safety goggle and a face mask so you do not inhale your parts and pieces. Think of buffing like using sandpaper - which makes the scratches even smaller. Apply the rouge to the wheel by turning on the motor and lightly pressing in the rouge into the wheel. Once you have the compound on the buffer, lightly press the stainless into the wheel. The brushed look will start to disappear and a shine will start to appear. Don't be afraid to press the piece into the wheel with a firm pressure. You will have to experiment with various pressures until you get comfortable with working with the buffer. Step 7 – Just like step 6, but use a medium buffing wheel with a medium grit rouge Step 8 - Just like step 6, but use a soft buffing wheel with a fine grit rouge During the last 3 steps, you will see the luster increase with the finer rouge used, but you may find also find dark spots appear as you buff… not to worry. Often it is compound build-up or heat. You can go over it with lighter pressure on the buffer and often it will go away. Also try wiping the piece with a damp cloth. Excess compound may just disappear. If you still see scratches in the finish, you may need to go back as far as the sand paper (depending how deep the scratch is) but often the buffer will remove the rest. Now you should have a brilliant piece ready to install back on the car. The project is time consuming, but rewarding. Note: I once had a piece slip out of my hands while buffing and wrap up into a little ball around the buffer. The piece was able to be hammered out, filed, sanded, and buffed. It went back onto my car later that evening. If you should happen to see my car, I would like to challenge anyone to try to find which piece it was! :-) |
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