Zen and the Art of RV Polishing

4kilo · Post by **4kilo** » Sat May 16, 2009 9:14 pm

My airplane just came back from the paint shop Friday, so now I get to polish out all the little problems caused by the painting process. The painter actually did a very good job of keeping the airplane reasonably clean, but a polish job very clearly displays EVERY imperfection.

Polishing is not for everyone, but it is not quite as bad as its reputation. Once the airplane has had a good polish job, it really isn't that hard to maintain. It's just the work to get that original polish.

You start out by compounding. This entails making passes over a small area of the aluminum with a big buffing wheel and polish (I prefer the Nuvite system). It's not very intuitive, because the slower the buffer turns the better a job it does. You also need to use much less polish than you think, and the polish does most of its work just as it is dissapearing from the metal.

This is not a job for someone who is OCD. The first pass is really impressive - the metal goes from dull silver to mirror with a bunch of imperfections. The next pass gets rid of a lot of imperfections, but many remain. The next pass gets even more. So you keep making pass after pass, and after each one, the metal gets a little better. If you made a hundred passes, the metal would look better than it did after 99. So when do you stop?

The compounding does all of the real work, but it leaves swirl marks. A special machine called a Cyclo is used to get rid of the swirls. Usually two or three passes each with a couple of grades of polish on the Cyclo will get rid of the swirl marks. But remember the little imperfections left by the compounding? No amount of work with the Cyclo will eliminate those, it must be done by compounding.

It's a lot of work, but when you finish, the metal will look like a mirror. I am often asked if all that work is worth the effort, so let me tell you a little story. Last fall, a group of us flew to a little airport for dinner. We tied the airplanes down and started making our way to the eatery. One of the ladies in the group walked over to my airplane and fixed her hair and checked her make-up in the reflection from my wing. Yup, its worth it.

Pat

cjensen · Post by **cjensen** » Sat May 16, 2009 9:56 pm

Great write up Pat! Your airplane looks great...but we need more pics on THIS site!!

As you know, I just started mine, and came away from the experience today a bit dejected, but I'll give it another go tomorrow...

Post by **Spike** » Mon May 18, 2009 11:15 am

4kilo · Post by **4kilo** » Tue May 19, 2009 8:18 pm

Still got some clean-up to do on the polish, but this gives the general idea:

Post by **Spike** » Wed May 20, 2009 8:22 am

That is quite nice!