Alloy polishing guide

This Is The Stuff You Need

DISCLAIMER IF YOU'RE STUPID: PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

@dmc lmao!

This Is The Stuff You Need

DISCLAIMER IF YOU'RE STUPID: PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

turn the card over, ive got the barcode number... just need to know where I can use it...

^ Ha Ha

Spent the day polishing, results were surprisingly good - old battered parts transformed into lovely SHINY ones!!

All i need now are some wheels and my latest build will be complete :) Was thinking of going shiny on the rims, but im not man enough to pull that off.

CXP 33's it is.. and on that note, anyone got any lying around?!?!

Get some shiny Deep-Vs or some NOS Rigida DP18s... No need to go through the living hell I went through... Took me 3 days!?!

slimjim, the sun is cracking the whip and you spent the day polishing ... :(

if it was outside with ice cool beer though, thats 'aight.

Note:

Be careful when you're making your own sodium hydroxide bath, don't put too much NaOH and you won't have a part any more. Or indeed a bucket. And whatever was underneath will probably be in bad shape as well. And don't leave the solution in the bucket after you've finished!! Well at least not if the bucket is also made of aluminium.

Also, I don't recommend using warm or hot water with it, unless you like not being able to see or breathe. :)

thanks for the advice asm :)

you reckon this would work on on a pair of MA2 rims ? I fucked up a few inches stupidly trying to 'improve' them with a dremel without checking for any "how to" first and now need to save them! ...

Yeh, it will be alot of work though, so if your bothered go for it

I know a good amount of elbow grease is needed but just want advice on product and technique. Cheers Jase.

Which parts?

Are they anodized?

caustic soda and then lots of polishing wheel action using autosol or brasso

look up a thread started by lpg on polishing stuff very good bit of info and quality end results

Bike Forums - View Single Post - Do It Yourself (DIY)

failing that, wet and dry and then brasso

ok cheers people. Shiny campag cranks coming up :)

Yeah, cheers for the heads up about the bike forum polishing guide.

I went shopping for the ingredients today. Pain in the arse to find oven cleaner with sodium hydroxide as the ingredients on the back of most oven cleaners only name a few and never list sodium hydroxide. Highly feasible it has it in it, but Im not paying 3 or 4 quid and it might not, I aint no chemist.

So here is a list of products that do.
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:C_2zB_GKHfUJ:householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands%3Ftbl%3Dchem%26id%3D19+product+with+sodium+hydroxide&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Simply Google: products with sodium hydroxide

Wish I'd done it before visiting three supermarkets, two of which were shitty wee "express" fellas that dont stock cleaning products.

Just thought this may help. Roll on the shiny components.

If it's not anodised is there any point to the caustic soda bit?

No.

thank you sam

i use to build polished air flowed carbs up in the garage and used the same technique on various bike parts.

for around 10 to 15 gbp you can get three polishing wheels (mops plus attahcment for drill and the wax needed)(ideally used on polishing machine) but they just go onto the end of a drill.

most recently i polished the tip of this sante crank (it was dull and oxidised when i got it where the paint had come off) only 15 minutes work

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also check out a stem i did recnetly - ebay tiem:

190317052169

fine steel wool can be good too, made some of my dull parts look a bit better before I brasso'd them

Ray Dobbins is a good source of info. on polishing, and lists some campag. parts that are not anodized:
http://www.raydobbins.com/polishing/

I was trying to polish a stem for a while using brasso and wet&dry sandpaper. It wasnt working at all.. All I got was smooth but matte looking surface but then i saw the bike forums post. Got myself a tube of autosol. It does a great job, even after the first couple of cycles the finish is much better.

So in my opinion brasso doesnt do the job very well. I think after some more polishing I will get a nice mirror finish.

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