AAAAHHHHH!!!! THE FRUSTRATION

[saiyan7]

OK Fellas,
What am I doing wrong. I have been spending countless hours on two sportbikes and four aluminum rims. I have purchased the hand held polisher and every type of wheel that Caswell sells along with all of the compounds both greasless and polishing. I have read all of the manuals on polishing and i even understand the molecular structure of the different metals. I've seen dopey gear heads get this stuff to shine better than i can. The following is my process. I am extremely meticulous when it comes to my work and i still can't seem to get it right. Please help! (i am looking for the perfect and i mean PERFECT shine)
1. greaseless compounds on sisal wheels (when necessary)
a. 120 grit
b. 180 grit
c. 240 grit
2. 400 grit sandpaper (wet)
3. 600 grit sandpaper (wet)
4. 800 grit sandpaper (wet) sometimes
5. black emery on spiral sewn cotton
6. brown tripoli on spiral sewn cotton
7. mother's metal polish (final)

sorry for the long post, but to continue:
I always cut against the grain of the step previous to the one i am on if that makes a difference. It's almost like i see the pores that are evident in aluminum. Is this possible? please help!

[gopedhead]

i totally feel you. i don't think you should cut against the grain. go with the grain, or pattern. and mothers polish or the white rough. caswell sells other that doesn't have any cutting action but the white does. i dont' think you should go black compound after you finish the 800. go with tropili after the 800 and then white and then the no cutting action. for got the color. its under the buffing section.

[systemBuilder]

I don't think you are going far enough with your sanding but i could be wrong. I work with aluminum bicycle parts and have prepped QR skewers for chroming, and have brush plated QR paddles and a few other items.

I got all the way to 1500 and 2000 grit sandpaper, wet-sanding under the faucet, then I get out the dremel at very high speed and very very low pressure and polish to a mirror finish with white rouge. On steel it is very very hard to do this. The reason is, when you screw up at step X, you usually don't know until step X+2, and so you waste lots of time with polishing compound X+1 and back to X+2 until you realize it aint gonna work and you have to backtrack to X. My items don't get any brighter when i plate them - in fact they get duller and i have to often re-polish and replate several times. I have not been very successful dip-plating items in my brush chroming solution.

Then i use nevr dull to hand polish to perfection. Some people have told me that simichrome may have some compounds that might be very difficult to remove prior to plating. I think nevr dull is not much more than some oil and acid, but i may be wrong about that.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA