Anyone else polished up sawblades yet? I only did one and it was very aggravating and time consuming....
Before
After
Side by side
I had to strip the paint off, then remove the machine marks with sand paper, starting at 320grit-400-800-1000-2000-2500. Then used mother's aluminum polish with a wool polishing pad on a drill... It was a pain to say the least, it took about 4 hours start to finish, but a lot of that time was trying different techniques. I'm sure on the next wheel I can do it in about 2-3 hours start to finish. Anyway, let me know what y'all think!
I think I would prefer paint for that reason (less effort), and it is a more durable finish. A polished wheel will corrode fairly quickly so you will need to keep polishing the the oxidation off. Paint OTOH, just needs to be cleaned like any other part of the car. and you can use a pressure washer to clean them.
funny, i did something similar on some 14" ford escort alloys i use for winter tires. they were badly oxidized and it bugged me so i tried sanding them by hand for about 30 seconds before i realized it was way too much effort. i put a sand paper disc (maybe called a flap disc? i'm not sure) on my disc grinder and used that instead and man, it worked like a hot damn. i was obviously careful not to hold it in one place for long. that only took about 5 min for all four wheels.
after that i sprayed them with 5 or 6 coats of flat black. they turned out great. i should have taken before and after pics but maybe i'll post some pics of them now anyway.
Yeah I know haha, I just got bored honestly and wanted to see how they would look polished, plus I had an off day. I polished those half moon/phone dial/button crx wheels on my 85 wagon and they turned out good but I didn't sand down the machining marks on them, they seem to be holding up well but I have to repolish them about once a month haha. I'm gonna get some more sand paper soon and see how good I can get that sawblade before I do the other ones.
I thought about clear coating them but I have terrible luck with clear coat
Do you remember what grit flap disk it was? I've used a 80grit one before and it took huge chunks out of metal out and it looked terrible after we painted it, but we weren't too careful with it either haha.
