I've got some plastic - the kind of plastic a hairdryer, or the main body of an iron might be made of - and I need to smooth it to something like its flawless moulded surface before I gouged one of the edges...
What will be a good way to do this? Very fine sandpaper? A very sharp blade to pare off some sharp bits sticking out? Heated metal to smooth it down?
Thanks,
Daniele
You won't get it back to a perfect finish. The acrylics and urethanes that these are made from are mostly blow moulded and once cured the material changes character and remains in the shape that the mould gave it. The only real way to make anything like this smooth and perfect again is to lay another coating of the same or similar material over it and fill in the broken sections underneath it.
Some wet and dry "sandpaper" would get it nice and smooth but obviously take the shine off the plastic.
Mark S.
Try rubbing hard with Brasso - its just a mild abrasive
You could followup with finer polishes, ending up with something like brasso. Might need lots of elboe grease though...
One can get it flat and smooth with very fine abrasive, but the surface will be matt not shiny. A year later you'll notice that the matt bit is dirty but the rest is clean. No practical way round that I'm afraid.
I'd carefully slice off the protruding bits and leave it at that.
Regards, NT
Progressively finer abrasives down to T-cut level.
That means you haven' gone fine enough on teh abrasive.
T-cut is used in the car world to polish out scratches in paint.
I guess thats true in principle, I just cant imagine spending that much effort to shine up the toaster.
Regards, NT
Get a buffing mop and put it on a leccy drill.
Why not just buy a plastic smoother?
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