First I aint got a machine shop, heck, I don’t even have electric lights in my backyard shed (I call it the shop, makes me feel good.) I dont have fancy tools or any real experience other than what I earn myself, so this is what I learned and how I did it.
The tools of the trade: A 4 1/2 inch grinder with a couple cutoff wheels and a 80G flap wheel (shown). Selection of sand papers, my poor-man’s buffing machine (explained as I go), patience, a few bandaids, and a rusty hand file or two.
Here’s the buffer setup. Two drill mounted mandrels, one for a stick of white polish and another for brown tripoli. Loose cotton wheels for the spinny end. The say that green stainless works too, but that would require more grease and another wheel. Money aint free ya know…
First I don’t have Dykem or Prussian blue…but a red marker I found in my tool box works just fine to layout where I want to stop cutting and grinding.
Here is the first set of cuts with the cutoff wheel. You gotta come at this from different sides to get it all off.
Here it is all cut off and ready for the next step…the flap wheel. DO NOT USE a grinder, I hear that grinding aluminum will make your wheel blow up and kill the neighbors dog…I kinda like that dog, so I didn’t test the theory.
Reflector pad all sanded down with the 80G flap wheel thing. Had to kinda guess where “round” was, mostly by feel and a 3″ c clamp used as a “caliper” to check diameter as I went.
OK. There was a ton of casting flash all over the legs, I knocked that down with the 80G flap wheel and once I was all done sanding the cut off parts with the angle grinder, I took a sheet of 100G paper and went to town all over it.
Now here’s the key from this point on. Move down in grit little at a time.
I went 100G to 220G to 400G to 600G to 800G-wet.
You HAVE to get all the scratches of the courser paper out before moving on…400G paper will not get out 80G marks from the grinder. get it? This takes a lot of time and you will lose a pair of pants to the mess this makes.
Here is the pic before and after:
No polishing yet, bottom leg is after the 800G-wet paper. If you like a great lookin satin feel, this is where you can stop and put ‘er back together. I am going for shiny, so keep reading.
On to the buffer outer machine.
Used a third clamp on the trigger (6000 rpm) and loaded the spinning wheel with brown tripoli for a second or two.
Did a test run on my brake lever….
Looks ok, so I did the leg. had to reload the wheel a lot, and rake it with a old hacksaw blade a few times. Once it was all shined up, I wiped it down with some old rubbing alcohol (to cheap to go buy acetone)…and switched wheels for the white polish.
Once I was done with the white and wiped it down here is the final result:
VERY happy with how it turned out…get out there and DO IT!
TIPS:
How long did it take? I only get daylight out there and with kids and stuff it took about three weeks…I guestimate 6-10 hours per leg.
Where ya gonna put the front fender now dummy? Flipped around on the rear, duh.
The reflector pad is the worst…I went with the assumption that the center of the flat is on the diameter and you only need to get rid of the corners either side of center. Does that make sense?
And lastly, the flap sanding wheel make a friggin HUGE mess…count on at least an hour of sweeping and vacuuming everything. I had dust inside closed toolbox drawers.
UPDATE:
I guy I know on the internets took this tutorial and tried it himself. These are his results:
You must be logged in to post a comment.