Metal finishing Q&As since 1989

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Polishing stainless steel on a Prevost bus

I have a 1981 Prevost Bus converted into a motorhome. The lower part of this bus is stainless steel. I have used different rouges and buffers. I have got a fairly good polish but still some scratches show through. Can you give me some suggestions of what I should be using in order to bring this to a mirror finish.

Don Trerice
- Whtehorse, Yukon, Canada
July 6, 2008

Hi, Don. There are many letters on this site about mirror polishing stainless steel, and if you use that term in the search engine it should work. But the short answer is that it is horribly tedious and you need to start over :-)

You will never remove those scratches with fine rouges -- it would be worse than trying to excavate a foundation for a house with a teaspoon. The only way to do it is to use a grit that is rough enough to remove the scratches. That will leave you, not with a mirror, but with a terribly scratched up surface, but with the deepest new scratch smaller than the old scratches. Then you use a finer abrasive and leave yourself with a surface with yet less deep scratches. The best way is to polish in a perpendicular direction each time and not stop until the last of the old scratches is gone. Do a search and you should find specific recommendations for grit size, etc.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
July 9, 2008