jrhendryx Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 One of the benefits of being a teacher is that I have summers off and can invest my time in things that are less frustrating than working with middle school children. Like sanding and polishing engine cases for 5 hours. Ok, so here was my process. I got a bowl of warm water with a little dish soap in it to remove any difficult grease and to keep the water nice and slick, and a sponge with a scrubber side. I also had 400, 600, 800, 1000, and 1200 grit wet sanding paper. The first thing I did was clean up the cases with the soapy water and scrubber sponge. Then starting with 400, I sanded side to side (as much as possible), up and down with 600, side to side with 800, and up and down with 1000. Finally, I went over it in a circular pattern with the 1200 to remove any obvious scratches. I used the sponge as a sanding block, and it worked fantastically. I then rinsed, dried, and polished the cases with a polish that I do not recall the name of at the moment (blue something). If I were to go back and do it again, I would use a rougher paper on these cases to start with, because the oxidation is pretty bad. Here are the before and after images. The right hand side (1st set of images) also has a coat of wax on it. I am experimenting to see which one will look better longer. Right side Before Right side after Left before Left after Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KFunk Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Very nice, I'm probably going to do the same thing soon. I've polished valve covers and such on my cars in a similar way. I prefer to use some 0000 super fine grade steel wool for most stuff. It's more flexible than sandpaper for getting in the nooks and is extremely fine. For some very nice final polishing, try to see if you can find someone with a DA air sander and put a polishing pad on it along with some of the polish. It works surprisingly quick to get the nice mirror finish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator drewpy Posted July 15, 2009 Moderator Share Posted July 15, 2009 invest in a cheap bench grider and get a set of polishing mops. you can do mirror finishes in an hour or so. nice work though, now you have gorilla arms Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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