aluminum polishing

[Krzemienr]

So I've been detailing cars for a while, but just recently go into deep metal polishing. I have a question as I'm a little stumped on this one. I got set of wheels from a junk yard for free to practice on..... I cleaned one of them up well, but no shine, tried metal/aluminum polishes... nothing really, so I used 0000 wool, and got a little bit of shine back, since these wheels aren't costing anyone anything, I decided to wet sand them. I used 1500, followed by 2000 and it removed a decent amount of scratches. now my question is, how would I safely removed the wets sanding scratches out of the metal? I tried a couple different compounds by hand, rotary, and DA, with no good results. I'm just experimenting here.... thanks for your help. Here's a couple pics:

Before:



After:


Before:


After:



I still have a little ways to go in terms of polishing it out, but I would like to remove as much of the tiny scratches as possible. Thanks!
Thanks,
Rafal

[Mike Phillips]

Re: aluminum polishing

If you're going to get into serious metal correction and polishing then you're probably going to need to get some special tools and products specifically for this kind of work.

There's probably some companies that offer the tools and products for this kind of specific wheel repair work but I don't know of any off-hand. You can start by looking here,

www.eastwood.com

For example here,

Eastwood Metal Buffing and Finishing

We make a great aluminum polish but what you're getting into is way past the scope of what this product is intended to be used for.

[Krzemienr]

Re: aluminum polishing

If you're going to get into serious metal correction and polishing then you're probably going to need to get some special tools and products specifically for this kind of work.

There's probably some companies that offer the tools and products for this kind of specific wheel repair work but I don't know of any off-hand. You can start by looking here,

www.eastwood.com

For example here,

Eastwood Metal Buffing and Finishing

We make a great aluminum polish but what you're getting into is way past the scope of what this product is intended to be used for.

thanks for the info mike, and I fully understand what you mean, looks like I'm going to be ordering some products and writing for more review... Thanks

Rafal

[Krzemienr]

Re: aluminum polishing

actually I just checked my cabinet and found a little of the eastwood stainless compound. It's a little more aggressive then I would have liked, but I did one pass with that on my sewn cotton wheel on my drill adapter, followed with the good old M105 and M205 and I'm very happy with the results here's a couple pics:

Before spoke for comparison:


After the polishing:



The 2 wheels I'm working with so you can see the condition of an old one:




So I'm not anywhere done with this wheel, as I only did one spoke, but now I have hope!!!

Rafal