Metal Polishing 101. Semester 1

Jeff Berger, I am 29 years old from Jasper, Indiana. I ran a full service truck wash for a very short time. I use the term detailing, but it is a very different type of detailing then what most people associate with the term. The majority of my work involves polishing aluminum (tanks, wheels, boxes, etc.) on semi truck. I am about a month away from building a 3,000 square foot retail shop for "dressup" items for semi trucks. I will also be handling metal polishing supplies. My goal is to make the retail shop a full time affair and spend very little time polishing aluminum. jberg@freewwweb.com

Before I began, allow me to make a few points I cannot stress enough to wear safety glasses. In addition, I usually wear a paper dusk mask.

Do NOT use an airflex buff (buff with metal ring in center) without a flange to hold the buff in place. Failure to comply may result in buff flying apart and causing injury. The metal ring is NOT designed to hold the buff in place, it is only there as a guide for the mounting bolt. Notice by the picture that I attach the buffs to the polisher with GRADE 8 bolts.

To apply the compound to the buff, hold the polisher while running in one hand, and the compound in the other hand and touch the compound to the spinning wheel. Make sure you touch it to the edge of the wheel that is spinning away from you. For your first time, it is a good idea to slow the speed of the polisher down to slow setting. It does not take that much compound. A short touch on a fast spinning wheel will be plenty. It will not seem like any went on the buff but it did. Using a fast spinning grinder in place of a polisher will probably result in injury to your face if you get in any tight spots or close to edges.

Do NOT use an airflex buff (buff with metal ring in center) without a flange to hold the buff in place. Failure to comply may result in buff flying apart and causing injury. The metal ring is NOT designed to hold the buff in place, it is only there as a guide for the mounting bolt. (I know I said this before, I just want to make sure you are listening)

EQUIPMENT NEEDED

Notice the flange holding the airflex buff (the buff with the metal center) on the polisher furthest to the right. These may look like grinders, but they are not. They are variable speed polishers. They turn a max of about 2,300 RPM, as opposed to a grinder, which turns 5,000 or 10,000 RPM. I paid $320 per polisher, but you can get a Milwaukee at Home Depot for around $200.00, but they are much bulkier and heavy. The brown and white bars are the compounds. The brown is Tripoli and the white is chrome rogue. The yellow airflex buff and the blue one, which is on the polisher, are the same, just different chemical treatments. The airflex buff is used to make your first cut. As soon as you hit it to the metal, you will think "Wow! What a shine!" but the ultimate shine comes after using the soft cloth (white).

Use the brown bar (Tripoli) with the airflex buff and the white (chrome rouge) with the final, soft buff. I chose the front end of an old Kirby vacuum to show before and after because it was in pretty rough shape. It is aluminum, but stainless can be polished too. Notice the two deep scratches on the right hand side of the picture.

When applying compound, make sure the direction of the buff is going away from you or you may end up with the bar of compound wedged in you mouth where your teeth used to be. My first step was to apply the brown bar to the air flex buff. Apply small amounts of compound often. Not large amounts less often.

Using this airflex buff will get fine scratches out and remove all the oxidation and dirt. It is possible to smooth out and even remove deeper scratches with this buff, but using a sanding buff is much quicker.

This is the buff for the second cut. Notice how soft it is. Use the white (chrome rogue) with this buff for a very deep shine.

I kept the left side of the work unpolished to demonstrate the difference. Look right where I am polishing. See that deep shine coming out? Remember that I used chrome rouge with this buff

See that shine? I skipped what would normally be the first step, removing the scratches. I did this to demonstrate the benefit of the sanding buff. The steps I did will polish out light to medium scratches, but heavy scratches would take quite awhile with an airflex

I am using the sanding buff to sand the deep scratches. This would normally be the first step, I just did it last so I could show the difference between using this and not. I would not recommend wasting time trying to sand scratches out by hand.

This is after sanding the deep scratches. Notice the fine sanding scratches the sanding operation left? These will polish out by doing the first two steps. I did not bother to sand the deep scratches all the way out because I have no intentions of finishing this piece

This is after I redid the polishing with the airflex buff and the finishing buff. I held the wrench up so you can see how well the object reflects after being polished. (Yes, those are what are left of the deep scratches in the back.) Notice the difference between the before and after. I spent less than 5 minutes total on the object. That includes sanding and polishing time. (Let's see you do that with Mothers!) The longer you spend on it, the deeper the shine will be.

I polished some rough, heavily scratched and damaged stock in order to show allthose people who still think Mothers is the way to polish metal. I didn't bother to sand any scratches; they are still there. They are just shiny scratches now. I spent less then two minutes total doing two operations on this 1-foot area. Keep in mind, this is a piece of aluminum that has never been polished before, it was still rough stock

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