Stainless Polishing, on going experiments...

[Kevin in NJ]

This is my learning 31 shell. It is pretty good to start with, no tears.

It had a hit on the back 90 degree edge at the bottom of this side. It will always have a little issue there.

The side has some waves in it. Basically in the front 1/2 or so and they were easily felt with fingers. I confirmed the low spots by looking for distortions in the 4 foot tube lights I have in my garage. This works only when there is some reflectivity, does not work after 150 grit paper.

I did not want to over do anything so I have been conservative in my approach. I have used a wider faced and more round hammer to move the low spots out. I have also found using a propane torch I could heat the low spot to just about changing color and it would move up some. It moved enough I could tell with finger feeling. Sandpaper on blocks confirms what I do. Sometimes I will wipe a sharpe across the area and take a couple of swipes with paper to see where I am.

I was using a softer but fairly hard sanding block, I have a set of blocks that have different stiffnesses. I switched to a very hard flat block because the one block was following the contours too much and not taking the high spots. You can see this in the picture below. You can see the random scratches in the low spots.

Now the picture. What you can make out here is the low spot with the random scratch (up in the dark region- very hard to get good pictures). I did quite a bit of wet sanding with a 150 paper (not a a name brand) that was not staying sharp very long. I think I went thru 3 or 4 sheets of paper a 1/4 at a time. I started making some good progress so I switched to 220 sticky disk on a locked DA making it more of a grinder. You have to be careful as the locked DA can turn some serious RPMs and generate too much heat. I learned this when working a junk shell learning some more basic stainless working. I cut a hole through the shell (ouch!).

I still need to do a ton of work to just this area. I am fine tuning walking the grits to finish. I also want to see if I am tackling the wavy side panel properly.

FWIW, I wonder if I am being too conservative in my grits. I was contemplating if I should have started leveling at 80 or 100 grit. Just that is a ton of work to get past those scratches.

I should add, I am using an old kitchen plastic trash can that has 2 notches for the lid. It holds the shell nicely for hand sanding.

[Mike V. Florida]

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Keep up the good work!