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polishing

moll780

Well Known Member
Due to circumstances (wind) I've got my wonderful RV9A in a hanger at HYI (with power) for the week and not in my hail shed at EDC. I'd like to take advantage of the 110v and try polishing the plane.

anyone have any recommendations for cheap polishers, compounds and techniques?

I've been googling but would like to know what RV owners that have done this think.

thanks
Gil
 
Polishing RVs

My '47 Luscombe is polished out and has won a number of of awards.

Use a Cyclo polisher, Nuvite, and lots of elbow grease!

See the swift association writeup at :http://www.irinfo.com/polish/html/polish.html

Caution: a polished RV wing is blindingly bright on a sunny day. Others who once polished later painted to reduce glare.
 
The previous owner of my 9 actually went over the whole skin with scotchbrite because of the glare.
I'd like to start with the fuselage and work it shiny, maybe not mirror like but at least get it representable.

Thanks for the link. very helpful.



My '47 Luscombe is polished out and has won a number of of awards.

Use a Cyclo polisher, Nuvite, and lots of elbow grease!

See the swift association writeup at :http://www.irinfo.com/polish/html/polish.html

Caution: a polished RV wing is blindingly bright on a sunny day. Others who once polished later painted to reduce glare.
 
Rolite

For metal polishing:
Rolite metal polish is great. It's been re-packaged by several popular motorcycle brands as it's a fantastic product.
So, bare aluminum, rolite Metal polish, (Not the Pre-polish it's much too coarse) then if you want the "Oshkosh" finish use the rolite AP-300.

For polishers, make absolutely sure you don't mistake an angle grinder for a polisher. They turn WAY too fast. The cheap polishers don't have much power but that may be a bonus if you're not used to using one.
Use the polisher on an angle, not flat and make sure the spinning edge flows off the trailing edges, if not you will bend something.
Put the product on the pad or on the surface you are polishing and start very slowly to work it into the pad and on the surface otherwise you'll end up with a line of polish adorning your coveralls. Don't use too much product at a time as you'll end up polishing polish if you know what I mean.
A LITTLE water from spray bottle helps keep the pad from gripping too when the carrier starts to dry.
Google rolite polish and you'll find a great article or two about polishing, before and after pics etc.
Be extremely careful around edges, antennas, fairings etc. I'd reccommend doing them by hand.Have fun!
 
The previous owner of my 9 actually went over the whole skin with scotchbrite...

If the surface has truly been "scotchbrited"--as in prepped for paint :eek:--I would never undertake polishing. It will be a HORRIFIC undertaking--and you'll probably never be happy with it.
 
its definitely well and thoroughly scotchbrited.
i'd love to paint but have no experience with that and cannot afford taking it to a shop. even a plain white paint job would be ok with me.
if anyone in the CenTex area is willing to donate time and space (i only have a hail shed), im willing to learn and do the all the work.


If the surface has truly been "scotchbrited"--as in prepped for paint :eek:--I would never undertake polishing. It will be a HORRIFIC undertaking--and you'll probably never be happy with it.
 
Caution: a polished RV wing is blindingly bright on a sunny day. Others who once polished later painted to reduce glare.

Boy I hear that!! If I had the $$ I would have mine painted. Someday.........
I bought some static sun shades for the canopy. They help, but I think it's not the answer.
 
Caution

Gil,

If you use a rotary polisher be careful to position it so the the rotating motion is moving OFF of any edges your polishing near. A polisher rotating INTO an edge can catch it and bend metal.

T.
 
Nuvite

Go to www.perfectpolish.com for all the details. You'll pay around $600 for the polishers, compounds, pads, etc. Expect the process to take approx 100 hours, depending on the condition of the metal.
 
Nuvite polish process pics

Ref the attached pics.
I practiced on an old RV4 vertical stab before working on my 9A. The -4 stab was only worked over with the compounding buffer and the F7 compound.
The airplane had the full treatment, i.e. compounding with grit F7 followed by C. Then cyclo buffed with F7 followed by S. I also used compound G on all the leading edges before using the F7. The bare aluminum leading edges really took a beating after 375 hours.

http://s871.photobucket.com/albums/ab273/Stephenf26/RV-9A polishing/
 
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Met-all

Years ago before all the products on the market now I use met-all to polish the leading edges of airplanes.

To remove the met-all polish we used "Flour", which removed the residue easily.

Probably not what you are looking to do these days, but, it is a "short-cut" I used years ago.
 
If the scotchbrite scratches are deep, you could use a DA sander and some 600+ grit sandpaper to wetsand out the deeper scratches. Then you could hit it with some polish.
 
I'm confused

If it's already been scotch-brited, then hasn't the AlClad layer been removed thus losing the corrosion protection?

Thanks,
 
alclad info

....my experience exactly.
Once the top layer is worn thru, it seems you get just oxidized aluminum alloy....forever!
The buffer pad turns black, black, black, black etc. etc. never really getting to the point you can start to 'polish'.
...but maybe I was using the wrong stuff?
 
....my experience exactly.
Once the top layer is worn thru, it seems you get just oxidized aluminum alloy....forever!
The buffer pad turns black, black, black, black etc. etc. never really getting to the point you can start to 'polish'.
...but maybe I was using the wrong stuff?

You can definitely polish non-alclad aluminum. The body panels on my kit car were regular ol' machine finish 5052. I started out by sanding with 800 grit wet/dry, worked up to finer grade then finished it out with 3M polishing compound:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~sbuc/stalkerv6/finishing.html

number_twentynine-6.jpg


It gets touched up by hand with Met-All once or twice a year whether it needs it or not. ;)
 
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