Polishing Alluminum

[OzRod]

Had my first go at polishing alluminum last week. It's a bracket that I'm mounting to the transmission tunnel to hold some guages in the ute. I first sanded with 400, 1200 and 2000 wet dry. Then I used a stitched buffing wheel on a drill press spinning at 520 rpm. This gave a pretty good shine, but not the crisp reflection I was after. Then I used a loose leaf calico buff and that made things worse. It dulled the shine. I used the correct compound for the job. Am I being to fussy?

Any tips for a novice?

[OzRod]

jhh

[OlBuzzard]

I believe you'll need some jeweler's rouge to really polish it up.  A good hardware store should have it.

[WZ JUNK]

I usually run the buffing wheel a lot faster but I do not know what effect it would have beside getting the job done quicker.  I would try speeding it up some.  I use a tool called a rake to clean the buffing pad occasionally.  A rake has a series of teeth like a saw blade and you hold it against the spinning buffing wheel.

[MrMopar64]

I'm with WZ JUNK I think you need more speed and the right compond you can buy a kit from Sears with 4 different componds for like 10 or 15 bucks.... I run mine about 1625 rpm I do alum and stainless works great

MM64  

[rumrumm]

You need the white bar of rouge on a soft white cotton wheel to finish it up. I gives it a nice shine. The orange rouge on the yellow wheel will only take it so far. And it will help if you can up the rpm to at least 1500 when doing the final polishing.

[EMSjunkie]

You need the white bar of rouge on a soft white cotton wheel to finish it up. I gives it a nice shine. The orange rouge on the yellow wheel will only take it so far. And it will help if you can up the rpm to at least 1500 when doing the final polishing.

Hafta agree with these fellers, just got done polishing a piece of stainless for my firewall. the white bar rouge and a good polishing wheel chucked in a hand drill did a great job. somewhere in here there is a picture of it.
good luck.

Vance
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"don't compare yourself to others, they are more screwed up than you think"

[OzRod]

Thanks for all the tips guys. Seems I had the RPM way to low! Will crank it up and see what happens.

I will definately try the rake to clean the white buff. As it's black now.

I am using the white compound. I used the compound with both stiched and open leaf buffs. I think the main problem in my case was RPM.

Thanks again,
Chris