Polishing Aluminium

[john thompson]

Have a fifty year old or so aluminium lamp housing that has been sprayed black. The black paint is bubbling off in places and we wish to restore it to a nice aluminium finish. Not neccesarily a shiny finish, a matt one would be just fine; and probably easier.

Using wet and dry carborundum paper is going to be quite a big job to get it looking good, especially around the detailed parts of it.

Is it possible to buy a small fairly inexpensive 'sand blaster' that would do the job? Or even some kind of paint stripper, either of which would not damage the aluminium surface?

Grateful for advice on how you might tackle this job.

[Sla#s]

Have to do this every day - (Aircraft engineer)

1. Remove paint. (paint stripper)
2. Remove worst of corrosion mechanically. (wet n dry and gentle fine wire brush. NOT a brass one)
3. Kill corrosion - use Phosphoric acid (Jenolite). Wet for 5 min then wash off with water. Dry thoroughly.
4. If you are going to paint it you can prep surface with something like Alodine - it's a bit like anodising. (Not sure of how to get that other than commercially)
5. Polish or repaint. If painting use "Self Etching Primer" for first coat.
6. For polishing Google "polishing aluminium".

Good Luck Slatts

[The Natural Philosopher]

On alumimium?

Surely not!

[gregz]

What do you think aluminum or navel jelly is?

Used to do my aluminum mag wheels all the time.

Greg

[gregz]

I had a panel sandblasted and it looked fine. I wanted a frosted look. If you can get it shiny, acid will etch it with a very fine finish. If it's fairly thick you ca always start from scratch, if you don't like what comes out.

Greg