Dustin(red35) & Sean(Karma) had been asking me about polishing aluminum, I have a few things on my car i polished but i am far from a pro but they look ok. So we decided to get together at my house and work on polishing a few parts. Dustin had some brackets and intake piping to polish and Sean went all out and polished his upper intake plenum. We were all happy with the results and the pictures dont really do the parts justice. I appologize for not posting a formal invite but I was not overly confident in my skills or passing them on to others so they could make a mess of there parts but in the end it worked out. We are planning another get together where A few guys will be DIY installs on a few parts they purchased I will post a formal invite for that one close to spring.

 

looks really good! How does one go about polishing parts?

Love your car btw, so clean!

 

Great work Gord, the polishing looks fantastic.

 

Nice job.

 

Really nice work, fellas. A DIY would be great!

 

Nice work. It looks sharp.

 

looks good. are u just buffing the parts or did u have to sand them at all?

 

Nice work Gord!

I'd like to learn how you do that.

 

You have to work them down progressively. (sanding & grinding)
The again progressively with the polishes,
all the way down to jeweler's rouge if you want a real mirror like finish.

I have all the gear for this, but never had the time to really get into it.

When we were on a road trip I looked up a guy in Portland Maine that does amazing work.
He learned metal finishing as a trade in the UK, then set up shop in Maine.
I picked up a lot of my supplies from him.

I still may get into this as a hobby at some point.

 

Yes we worked them step by by step from 80grit down to 1500-2000grit then through a few buff cycles. Its very time consuming I think Dustin and Sean were both suprized at the amount of time it took. Seans upper intake was was a few hours with both of us going to town on it. They got to my house shortly after lunch and left at 8 or 9pm that wvwning and the parts pictured are all we got done and all three of us worked at it...proper tools may speed things up but we were set up ok for DIYers.

 

They turned out great Gord...
The tools the guy in Maine had were not very exotic by any means.
Just a real variety of differet sized sanding & buffing wheels set up in different configurations.
He did most of the fine detail work with several different dremels.

Funny think is I really don't like chrome; but I love the look of polished metal.
Polishing has a totally different quality & feel to it.
& I think part of it is knowing the work & effort that goes into it.

Props on some nice work

 

Great work guys, the parts look amazing. I'd like to learn how to polish myself, just love the look of polished metal under my hood!!

 

Me too. i hand build the inserts on the rad support and in the hood skeleton. I have no clue how many hours but I would never do it again when I was making templates cutting the aluminum I was thinking I could make a kit and sell it that idea was long forgotten before I even had the peices fit in the hood let alone polished

 

If you guys get a few parts and 2-4guys (any more than that it would be a cluster F*$#) we could do it again. Like I said I think my skills are getting better my major problem is my lack of paitence its easier when working on others parts with my parts i was like its good enough, with Sean/Dustins parts I didnt want to think man Gord screwed that up I should have just left it alone.

 

heheh.. was just curious what he had done. i manufacture stainless steel fittings. have a whole polishing department. a lot of our machined fittings of the line only have to be buffed to get it down under 20Ra... but we have a lot of automatic machines for grinding, sanding etc. to help us out and the speed up the process. we can go all the way down under 5Ra which is literally a mirror finish.