Polishing Metal

Due to some of the parts I got made in engineering needed adjusted, there were a lot of mishaps and file marks on all the pieces. I had always known I had needed to polish the metal parts but never knew that it would be as necessery as it has been.

I looked on google for some instructables on polishing aluminium but never found anything substantial that I could follow. This then led me on to youtube for some tutorial videos on the same subject. This is where I found a video which clearly went through the process to achieve mirror effect polished aluminium.

Available here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQVBSoXlEc


^^ this is the 2 parts which had been filed to increse the fillet diameter. This is before any finishing.

^^ In the tutorial the guy recommends working through from 400 up to 2000. What I had availbe to me at the time only went up to 1200 and I had started from 240 grade wet and dry because some of the tooling marks were difficult to remove with the 400. Therefore the grades which I used were: 240, 400, 600 and 1200. The results were just as similar.

^^ some of the parts after wet and dry sanding and metal polish applied and buffed.

^^ the shutter button. It was too difficult to sand between the grooves on the front of the part do this was just polished as best as I could.