Hey everyone,
So today I just got my aluminum polishing kit and I thought my dreams of shiny-metal-magnificence were finally going to be realized. Let me sum up my feelings with the following emoticon.
After doing some research in these here forums I "think" I've narrowed my problems down to no less than six possibilities.
A. I haven't used a low enough grit sandpaper to get rid of the pits.
B. I didn't use any kind of water with my wet/dry sandpaper.
C. I did a cut and color stroke in the same buffing session.
D. I used a too-slow drill.
E. Not doing any kind of cleaning except for a simple rub down with water.
F. All of the above.
I checked with the teacher and the correct answer is E.
The lowest grit I went to was 220. I thought it'd be enough but after several passes the pits can still be seen after "polishing". My research tells me I should go all the way down to 80 grit but I'm afraid that might cause
more problems.
I didn't use any water or, as I've read, some kind of magic dish soap concoction. What's the formula for that stuff and why is it better than plain water?
When I was buffing I went in and out of the lip of the wheel as I went back and forth. As if I were cutting grass.
According to Ryobi's website my drill goes up to a whopping, get this, 100 RPM! Using the 4" wheels that come in the kit I'm doing 100 RPM (probably less, really).
In between stages I did
zero cleaning except to simply wipe the compound dust off the wheel.
But after all this I do think I was using the right amount of compound because I never had the thick build up that I've read about.
One thing I noticed is that after using the black compound with the sisal wheel I move to the brown compound with the sewn wheel. But the problem is that a lot of the scratches from the black compound+sisal wheel are still visible. Some of them go away but the majority of them are still there.
Last thing I should mention is that my sandpaper grits are 220, 400, 800, 1000, 1500. After reading the forum it seems that I don't need to go higher than 600 which I kind of figured out myself since even the 800 grit seemed smoother than the black compound+sisal wheel.
I've included some pictures of the results.
Any and all comments are welcome and let me know if I've left out any pertinent details.