01 Feb 2007 03:10 pm
Polishing Stainless Lugs
How to polish stainless steel lugs - I thought I would demonstrate with some downtube mounted cable stops. Count on about half a day for both of these pieces.
Down Tube Cable Stops - Before and After Polishing.
Please forgive my finger prints on the polished one. I didn’t notice them when I was taking the picture. Here is what you are going to need:
-Something to hold to work piece - a mandrel for lugs or something like a piece of pipe and some double sided tape for these guys
-Small sharp files, at least flat, round and half round. The more shapes the better. Only use files with fine teeth though, or you will have difficulty sanding out the file marks
-Sandpaper - lots of sandpaper - ideally 180, 240, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit. 400 and above will be wet sanding paper. Get good sandpaper like 3M or Norton.
-Buffing Coumpound and Wheels - You will need at least White (fine?) and ideally Blue (extra fine?) compound. A bench mounted soft cotton buffing wheel works best, drill mounted will work, even cotton rags and elbow grease will work if you do a good job with the 2000 grit. You will need seperate wheels and buffs for the white and blue compounds.
Ready To Go - Piece is mounted on some tubing using doublesided tape.
Once you have all your supplies, get the part mounted on something you can work with and clamp in a vise to hold. For the cable stops, I mount them on piece of tubing with foamy double sided tape. Works great, even up to the buffing wheel. The first step is to file the part down, removing all the molding marks, surface texture and defects. As well, you want to flatten and define the surfaces and curves at this point. All the flat surfaces will be concave from the way the part cools in the mold when it was made. Use the appropriae file for the job - flat files for flat surfaces, round files for the curves, and match the file to the curvature as much as possible. This is important as you want to flatten the surfaces as much as possible as any irregularities will really show up when it is polished!
Almost Done with the Files - Still some small pits in the foreground that need to go.
Once you have the entire surface of the part down to shiny metal, with the flat faces flat and the curves the way you want them, time to start into the sandpaper. You can do some shaping with the grits up to 400, so make sure you are not taking off corners you don’t want to. Work your way up the grits making sure with each grit you remove the marks of the previous grit. Do this by sanding in one direction until ALL the scratches go in that direction. Then sand at 90 degrees to this until ALL the scratches go in the other direction. Pay attention to this and the work will go a lot faster.
Sanded to 400 Grit.
This is what 400 grit looks like. At this point the part will have a good shine to it, so move it around in the light to make sure you don’t have any ripples or pits you want to work out before moving up to higher grits.
The part on the right is sanded to 2000 grit.
Keep working up with the wet sandpaper to 2000 grit. Going up to 2000 grit is worth it. At this point, you can buff the tight spots with a rag and compound if you have to, and a buffing wheel will make short work of the final polish.
Here are the cable stops mounted on the frame
Lots of elbow grease and this is what you will end up with!
