Polishing stainless .

clyst

clyst

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Hi All

I have some stainless strip which I think is 316 (bought it a long time ago) and appears to be straight from the mill "rollers". What is the best method of polishing either by hand or DIY machines? I'v tried emery cloth and metal polish with little succussl

Cheers
 
fine grit applied by mechanical means getting finer.then buff and wax.least that is what themetal polisher was next to my business used to do(buff cloth and wax together
 
clyst said:
Hi All

I have some stainless strip which I think is 316 (bought it a long time ago) and appears to be straight from the mill "rollers". What is the best method of polishing either by hand or DIY machines? I'v tried emery cloth and metal polish with little succussl

Cheers
Click to expand...

Unless you need to polish a lot I find 1000 wet and dry-used wet-followed by Solvol Autosol metal polish works fine. I have just polished some brackets I fabricated and welded with good results using this method.
 
clyst said:
Hi All

I have some stainless strip which I think is 316 (bought it a long time ago) and appears to be straight from the mill "rollers". What is the best method of polishing either by hand or DIY machines? I'v tried emery cloth and metal polish with little succussl

Cheers
Click to expand...
3M produce a metal finishing cloth, rather like a nylon scourer. That is what the professionals use for finishing stainless, though if it's still in rough it will take a lot of elbow grease to get it to a fine polish.
Coarse abrasives are pretty useless.
I use the wetted 3M cloth on stainless, above the waterline, and to burnish the prop - it doesn't produce quite as deep a lustre as metal polish on aluminium bronze, but it's pretty close and infinitely less tedious hard work than the metods so far suggested.
 
If its straight from the mill "rollers" you need to get through the surface layer first.

This is what I do

Sand the surface with a 120 grit resin bonded disk on a rubber backing pad fitted to a 125 mm angle grinder.

Then I sand out the surface with 120 grit flap wheel in a slow speed die grinder

I then change to 240 grit flap wheel and sand out the surface generally at right angles to the previous sanding.

If you can get 320 grit flap wheels I then repeat the above.

I have a 250 mm dia calico polish mop which I use either with my fixed polishing machine of I have a 200 mm polish mop mounted on a large angle grinder depending if I can take the piece I am polishing to the fixed bench machine or not.

The above is used with the correct polishing compound for the material you are polishing.

Polishing stainless is a hard job and to do it from the raw mill material requires quite a lot of effort.

With all due respect to the posters above starting off with fine grit or polishing compound will take a very long time.

Polishing from raw stainless is a messy and strenuous job requiring heave duty equipment.

Look here http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317700&page=2
 
Thanks for all your suggestions chaps . Looks like hard work !! Think I will buy some shiney stuff
 
Depending on how rough it is to start with, and how perfectionist you are, going down the grades of wet and dry, used wet, 120, 400, 1200, followed by autosol works for me.

The main thing is to get rid of any big damage with a file or belt sander before starting.
 
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