The Armour Archive

In the near future, I will need to polish a stainless steel helm. Problem is, I don't know how to go about doing that.

How does one take a stainless steel armour project a turn it into shiny goodness?

noooooo, it burns the eyes!

Satin is sweeter.

Here's my trick.

Step 1: put the wire wheel on the grinder.
Step 2: brush it until it doesn't shine.
Step 3: take it outside and rub some of the road crud that is crusted to the bottom of the truck's frame into it.

OK, so I guess what I am saying is how do you take a piece of armour from its rough state to a finished state (shiny polished or satin finish)?

What tools, processes, etc. do you use?

I use a 7 1/2 hp baldor 3600 rpm buffer that can rip your arm off and twirl it around until its empty.

a small 3/4 to 1 hp 3600 buffer with a few 8 inch cloth(cotton) wheels works pretty well. start with black or green polish and progress to white diamond polish.

some use sisal wheels but I dont care for them. I usually one stage polish because the big baldor has enough torque.

if its really rough use scotchbrite wheels and take the rough spots down they are also called blending wheels. I dont like flap wheels as I think they are too rough on the metal and difficult to remove scratches have to be worked in stages to get rid of them.

you can get polishing supplies on ebay or from harbor freight.

I am sure there are polishing essays somewhere in the archives past hisotry. I would do a search on polishing stainless and read before I would ask too many more questions.

then I would ask very specific ones on any issues I am having.

There are as many answers to that as there are armorers polishing stainless. Do a search on the archive and you will find many suggestions. Google it and you will find many more.

The fast answer: Start with around 300 grit sandpaper and sand the surface. If 300 grit does not obscure all of the scratches then the next step is coarser. 200, 150, 100 etc. Once you have removed all the scratches proceed to finer grits, alternating directions and sanding until you remove all of the marks in the other direction by the coarser grit. After 600 or 800 grit switch to buffing compound.

Power makes this easier. I use a 1.5hp motor belt fed to an expanding wheel and Trizax belts. Then I move to green cutting compound. The green could be followed by white and I could even do a pass semi-wet but I have never wanted stainless quite that shiny.

You can use bench-top grinders, buffers, palm sanders, belt sanders, disk sanders, drill-press with sanding attachments or even by hand. The key is working slowly and in steps, insuring that each previous pass is erased. Each finer pass usually takes twice as long as the previous so what in the beginning is 5 minutes becomes 2.5 hours after going 5 steps.

This is ignoring anything fancy industrial like electropolishing.

Luck!
Sean

Best place to start is to tell us what power tools you have for polishing.

As far as power tools:

- Drill Press
- Hand Sander (square)
- Hand Drill

I do have an air compressor and some assorted tools for it.

I would be willing to get some tools from Harbor Freight (I am lucky enough to have a store nearby) if I knew what to get.

I did do a search for "polishing" in the archive and looked in the essays without any luck.

Found this, will edit more in as i find them
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=111467&highlight=stainless+polishing
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=98730&highlight=polishing+stainless

bigfredb wrote:OK, so I guess what I am saying is how do you take a piece of armour from its rough state to a finished state (shiny polished or satin finish)?

What tools, processes, etc. do you use?

Yeah, thing is, I was serious about just using the wire brush.
It depends on the initial finish you're talking about.
Are you taking it from a rough from the hammer finish, or is this an existing helm you're trying to bling? 'Cause I won't help you bling stainless, 'cause it looks terrible.

If it has been hammered hot or a lot of steel tools have been used on it, then you're going to need to either bouge, planish or grind until you have a relatively smooth surface.

Bouging is used when you have a relatively clean surface (not a lot of hammer marks) that just has smooth dimples or bumps in it. I put a piece on a stake that has a radius as close to the arc of the piece as I can get it, and I hit it on the outside with a soft hammer (rawhide, UHMW, delrin, etc - not rubber though). I use lots of light and my fingers to tell where it's too low or too high.

Planishing is used after raising or bad dishing. It's when you've got a moonscape going on in the piece. This is when you'd put it over the same stake (match radius) and hit it with a flat faced metal hammer, to turn a moonscape into a lightly faceted piece.

Grinding would be done after planishing to take out those dimples and smooth everything out. I use an angle grinder with no coarser than 50 grit sanding discs. If you got this from rfth then this is probably where you want to start.

If this is already a finished helm, then you probably wouldn't do any of the above.

If you want a satin finish, I'd go with a light pass of 80 grit angle grinder, then 120 grit, then I'd wire wheel it and yes, I would probably go out to the truck and scrape road crap off the underbody and rub it in a little.

Of course, your question is kind of like "how do you rebuild a carburetor". We can give you generalities, but without knowing specifics we can't really get you where you need to be. Post a pic!

schreiber wrote:

bigfredb wrote:OK, so I guess what I am saying is how do you take a piece of armour from its rough state to a finished state (shiny polished or satin finish)?

What tools, processes, etc. do you use?

Yeah, thing is, I was serious about just using the wire brush.
It depends on the initial finish you're talking about.
Are you taking it from a rough from the hammer finish, or is this an existing helm you're trying to bling? 'Cause I won't help you bling stainless, 'cause it looks terrible.

If it has been hammered hot or a lot of steel tools have been used on it, then you're going to need to either bouge, planish or grind until you have a relatively smooth surface.

Bouging is used when you have a relatively clean surface (not a lot of hammer marks) that just has smooth dimples or bumps in it. I put a piece on a stake that has a radius as close to the arc of the piece as I can get it, and I hit it on the outside with a soft hammer (rawhide, UHMW, delrin, etc - not rubber though). I use lots of light and my fingers to tell where it's too low or too high.

Planishing is used after raising or bad dishing. It's when you've got a moonscape going on in the piece. This is when you'd put it over the same stake (match radius) and hit it with a flat faced metal hammer, to turn a moonscape into a lightly faceted piece.

Grinding would be done after planishing to take out those dimples and smooth everything out. I use an angle grinder with no coarser than 50 grit sanding discs. If you got this from rfth then this is probably where you want to start.

If this is already a finished helm, then you probably wouldn't do any of the above.

If you want a satin finish, I'd go with a light pass of 80 grit angle grinder, then 120 grit, then I'd wire wheel it and yes, I would probably go out to the truck and scrape road crap off the underbody and rub it in a little.

Of course, your question is kind of like "how do you rebuild a carburetor". We can give you generalities, but without knowing specifics we can't really get you where you need to be. Post a pic!

Right on! NO BLINGING THE STAINLESS!