TOPIC: Polishing aluminum

Any suggestions on polishing aluminum trim? Best products and methods to get the best result would be great.

Thanks, Jil

I've heard people speak of several ways to go about it Jil, ranging from jewlers rouge to rubbing compound. I think there's even an article in the Research/Restoration section on polishing metal, can't remember if it covers aluminum or not. The only thing I'll use these days is Flitz polish on a buffing ball (drill mounted). Then follow up with a coat of good wax to protect the shine. Others may have good suggestions, but that's what I use.

I polished up my grab rails with rouge sticks, you can different grades from home depot,stainless, jewelry ,metal, I put cotton buffing wheels on my grinder, they come out like chrome.. I treid spraying clear coat spray on them , they come out dull looking .I'm going to take the clear coat off !

I like using mothers mag wheel polish,works great by hand or even better with a drill and polishing wheel.

The Mothers Mag Polish DOES work great. I used it on my boat and it makes tarnished aluminum shine like chrome with minimal buffing. I have used rouge and buffing wheel and the Mothers is much better and easier.

I used Mothers also worked great for me

I polished a lot of real dull gray cast aluminum and annodized extruded pieces during the recent restoration of my G3. Like 65G3, I put a medium cotton wheel on my 6" bench grinder. I used black rouge, moved to white and then the brown, the pieces came out like chrome. I heard about folks that had problems with clear coat afterwards, so I sealed mine with Penetrol, where you brush it on, then immediately rub off the excess... like oiling wood.

For the annodized pieces, I first soaked them in a bath of Draino, which removes the annodization (you can't polish annodizing, it just turns black) only do this outdoors, as it creates hydrogen gas and other dangerous fumes. After the annodization is dissolved and the pieces are washed off, then it buffs up real nice, like the cast pieces.

For my rub rails and sponson rails, they were really scratched up, so before I polished them, I sanded them with a palm sander and 220 grit, then 400 grit... it got everything except the real deep scratches, but made those less noticable.

Oh yeah, the pieces too big to polish on my grinder with the cotton buffer wheel... i bought a cotton buffing wheel for my high speed drill.

Dean