Reply #10

[cyclops]

I thought I would share how I polished the boat.
A neighbor of mine at our old house drove dump truck for an asphalt company, and he was always out polishing his rig so I went down to see what he was using. He used a airway buffing wheel on an electric polisher/sander with Flitz, and let me tell you with double aluminum dumps, and the wheels, fuel tanks, ect. all polished up you definitely needed good sunglasses as he drove by. Anyway he told me he got the airway buffs at Truckers Supply in Federal Way so I headed out and bought a Craftsman 6" sander/ploisher model #315.115031 and went up to Truckers Supply and bought an assortment of 8" buffing wheels, and jewlers rouge. I like the dry bricks as it makes less mess, and is easy to use. I ended up using the orange wheel with 86/82 thread count with a 220 grit brown tripoli brick to cut the oxidation, and scratches. Then I used the white 68/72 thread count wheel with the 800 grit white brick to polish. I polished horizotally, then vertically in 1' sections going over it twice in an effort to reduce tiger striping. The first time I did it I then hand polished with a liquid grean polish and it looked like a mirror. This time I didn't and I can see some tiger striping but I plan to do it again this summer. I'll probably use an orbital with the green polish as a final step rather than hand polish this time. The first time I had the boat on blocks in the garage, and had a lot of time to mess with it. Talk to the folks at Truckers Supply, and they'll set ya up.

You can see the polisher with yellow wheel, and what's left of the 2" x 12" brick of tripoli in the last pic.