stainless restoration

[RICH MUISE]

One of the members asked me offline what I had used for polishing stainless, and I thought I'd share what I had experienced. I am by no means an expert on the subject, and guys that do this for a living probably have much more efficient methods, but this is a definetly something anyone with a lot of time and patience can do with oustanding results, and for a minimal investment in materials. For about 150.-200 or so you can set youself up with a nice bench buffer and all the buffs and polishing compounds. This is about what it would cost to farm out about 4 or 5 feet of trim. This is going to be a long article, so I'll do it in sections. The process is time consuming, you can probably figure about 2 hours per foot of trim, so get a comfortable stool, put a movie on your shop t.v., and get some old towels to cover your workbench (you'll be using lots of water).
The stainless on our trim is only about .023 thick, so even with the stainless being a tough material, it dents easily. Deep scratches will be a problem as you can't remove too much material without the trim getting too thin. The windshield trim is probably going to be your toughest challenge because it faces the front of the car and, if it's like mine, had so many pits I had to remove a few thousands of material off virtually the entire surface. You may want to start with the back window trim or a side piece. to get your feet wet.Hopefully your trim will be in reasonably good shape to start with. If it has major dents and distortions, you may want to look for replacements.
The first thing you need to do is find all the spots that need extra work...little dents, scratches, etc. The best way to do this is with a skotchbrite pad and water. Clean the front and back of the trim until it's got a nice even straight line grain. Once you get that "skotchbrite finish" on it, most of the imperfections will jump out at you. use a marker to identify those spots. To be continued...

[RICH MUISE]

continued... Because the stainless dents easily, likewise it can be "undented" easily. Your biggest problem here may be getting to the backside area of the trim to tap the dent out. Many areas of the trim are folded over on itself so it's double thick, making it harder to find and to get the dent out. cleaning the backside of the trim with skotchbrite makes it easier to find the raised spots from the back.Because the material is so thin, you have to move the plane of the material in the damaged area back to where it was rather than just sanding it out. I found deeper pits and scratches were easier to remove if the damaged area of the stainless was actually moved out a few thousands (so that a little dent was actually transformed to a very slight little bump). It's easier to remove a small bump down flush rather than removing the surrounding material to the depth of the scratch or dent. The stainless moves easily so be gentle. I used a combination of wooden dowels, some rounded, others shaped to fit, and a small tack hammer. If you have durablock sanding blocks, they make an excellent base to set the stainless on when your tapping out the dent. Once you're ready to start removing the scratches and bumps that were dents, resist the temptation to use materials that are too coarse. a file or too coarse sandpaper can easily add more scratches that are as hard to get out as the original damage. I usally use a diamond needle file, or 400 wet or dry glued to a stick and used wet to remove the damaged material. ocasionally I might go to 320 wet or dry (used wet) in a very small area, but never coarser than that. After removing the imperfections, I go over the entire piece with 400 wet, then 600 wet, then 1000 wet. With every jump to  a finer grit, you want to remove all of the previous sanding scratches with a finer "scratch". progress to 1500 wet, at this stage you will probably see ares with fine scratches you didn't see before, so back up a grit or two and do it over until all the scratches are gone. Final hand sanding is with 2000 grit wet. If you don't see any scratches, it's time for the buffing wheel...to be cont.

[57AGIN]

Rich:

Very good topic.  Just a little late for refurbishing mine and given the number of dings, etc. in my stainless that needed work on, I probably would have been working on it for the rest of this year.  This would be a great project for the guys in most of the country during the winter, when their 57's are sitting out the winter in the garage.  Fortunately, I was able to get all of mine done by a shop Santini has used for years for about 1/3rd the high bid for restoring it and it has turned out very nice.  I'm going to be taking the two clips that hold the rear glass top & bottom stainless back to have the shop do a little tightening on the metal that holds the two pieces together.  I'm very fortunate out here to have my neighbor, very good friend and fellow 57 owner, Rick Crawford, point out flaws and things that need additional work on.  Things that I'd never guess would be important.

However, I am doing some of my own polishing on my aluminum intake manifold and assume that much of what you are saying about using progressively finer wet or dry sandpaper followed by buffing would help get rid of the many scratches that accumulate over the years in just cleaning or working around the engine compartment.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Bob
57 AGIN

[alvin stadel]

Rich, good job, only you forgot one important thing.  When it comes time for the buffing wheels get an old piece to practice on,  I'v seen nice pieces of trim get ate and bent by not paying attention or having a good hold of it. Buffing wheels can be very unforgiving. take care, Alvin

[shopratwoody]

What Alvin said!
I have used a buffing wheel, bufffer, drill motors etc for many
years and you can destroy a piece in a flash

[Ford Blue blood]

While buffing the fender stainless on my 62 Bird had a piece take off and fly out of the back of my buddies shop (I was under instruction) and land in the yard.  No damage, we just had not gotten to the part about watching out for the end and direction of rotation!

[RICH MUISE]

hadn't forgotten..was just to be in one of the "to be continued"'s...I probably spent 10 or 12 hours repairing damage to parts that the buffing wheel grabbed. The key here is always pay attention...it's easy to let your mind wander after you've been standing in front of the buffer for an hour or so and as soon as you stop paying attention to exactly where the part is on the wheel, it'll jump up and bite you.
several things that cut down on the chances of that happening are keeping the part on the bottom of the wheel, that way the wheel will push the part away from you if it grabs an edge or end. Secondly, purchase the widest wheels you can find. Mine are 1 1/4 wide and are much easier to use than the 1/2" wide wheels. The only place I've found them were at a large swap meet, but some of you guys that live in the more densily populated areas may have them available at a local shop. (graingers maybe??). I bought my bench buffer at Harbor Freight on sale for about 50. also bought a stainless buffing kit (20.), and a wheel rake there. The kit comes with 3 grades of buffing compound and some shaft mounted wheels for a drill motor or drill press. The wheel rake is for cleaning of old buffing compound from the wheel..you'll be doing that often.You will need two types of wheels...a spiral sewn hard wheel for use with the coarser compounds, and a soft (not spiral sewn) wheel for use with the medium and/or fine buffs. Ideally you'd want 3 or more wheels so you can progress from coarse to medium to fine without having to clean off the wheels, but I'm sure none of us are going to buy and extra bench buffer just for that reason.  I use one of the soft shaft monted buffs in my drill press for the final polishing with blue magic metal polish.You will probably go thru the same routine as with the hand sanding, in that you will get to a point where scratches start to appear that wern't seen before, and you will likely have to back up a grit or 2 again, even back to sandpapers sometimes to get that final flawless finish.
Bob...it's not only a good winter project, but is great for those times when we're waiting for that spare cash to come in and are looking for low cost projects to keep the big project rollin along.   Rich

[RICH MUISE]

one quick note about the blue magic metal polish. After you do what you would think be the final polishing with a microfiber towel, go back about a 1/2 hour later and hit it with the towel again. I discovered when you do the polishing it leaves a silicon film on the metal that takes a while to dry. It's hard to see, but it's there. once it has dried out, a final polishing with the towel will make a noticable difference.   Rich

[Ford Blue blood]

Buffing stainless is rather mind numbing and it requires much energy to "stay in the game" and pay attention to who is on first!

[geraldchainsaw]

ok,   months back i asked about taking off the stainless trim on  the quarter panel,   oik i got it off not paying to much attention to what i was doing,  ok so now i've taken off the opposite side and c more of how its fastened,   had 3 bolt ons near the rear of piece but towards the front it has what looks like the same kind of fasteners u would use on door panels,  nylon like thing that goes in the hole and is hard to pull out,   but over the years has worn away,   so now for the stainless trim,   the trim to quarter panel fastener is kinda the same idea but a little diff,   has a metal base that rides inside the stainless trim but the base also has the nylon type stud,  any one know how handles them,  if at all?,  i'm going to painters supply and c what they have, other wise i'm going to Reileys and get some of the nylon fasteners and c if i can make something up,     now as far as working the stainless,  i know its not a easy job,    but the way i do it is use a small file,   pean out the low spots with a hard oak piece with a radius on the bottom,  come back with the file,   work it till its gone,  then use 220 grit sandpaper,  then go to 500 etc,  ending up buffing,  at least it works for me.   o, i forgot to say,   i always thought that the stainless strip was held in place towards the front with a stud and nut,  not so,   its one of those nylon type holders,  you don't have to take the back seats out,   can be done  from the outside,   boy what we learn from on experience.    Jerry

[Frankenstein57]

Rich, any recommendations for shining up stainless that's on the car? I thought masking the paint with the blue painters tape, then a polish like flitz or similar. Suggestions?  Mark

[RICH MUISE]

Mark, sorry I missed your post earlier. Tough call since I don't know what kind of shape your stainless is in....probably like most of you guys my experience with the s.s. trim has been limited to either normal detail work and polishing on the car, or full restoration off the car. It could easily get into one of those "I wish I hadn't started this right now" projects. I think your idea of masking tape is good if it it doesn't come off when it gets wet. If you're going to go further than just a good polishing, that is, using something abrasive like 1500 or 2000 grit wet or dry, it'll only work well with lots of water.
a buff on a power drill, or one of those "power ball" things mother's makes might help alot cutting down the elbow grease time. I'm not familiar with flitz polish. I use blue magic, but I believe it has a silicon in it, and I'm going to make an effort not to use silicon products on my car after it is painted and assembled.

[Frankenstein57]

I was by my body man today, he had a product made by mothers. Mag   wheel and aluminum polish,really worked on stainless with some elbow grease . Mark