Reprinted from i Saluti, October 1999
from the Alfa Digest via the Internet
Polishing Stainless Steel
I have a stainless rear bumper from a 72 GTV and while the basic metal looks good, there are some scraped gouge-like scratches in a few places, as if someone dragged something hard and sharp across the bumper, making a shallow scratch with a �berm� lip on each side of the scratch. Anyone know a good way to polish/grind these out?
One of the stainless rear bumpers on my Duetto must have had one of those near-permanent plastic parking stickers on it many years ago. It looked like the DPO had scraped it off with a burred paring knife, leaving furrows much like the ones described. The restoration process is simple but labor intensive. You start with a sanding block and coarse sandpaper, work to fine paper, then begin polishing with a series of compounds and wheels. If you�re patient the result is actually better than original. Eastwood Company is one excellent source for polishing supplies and kits. They supply good instructions, too. � Bob McKeown
You can definitely sand and polish gouged stainless to a perfect shine. We did this occasionally at the tool and die shop where I worked. First carefully remove the gouged-out bumps, either with a file or a polishing stone for tool steel as used by tool makers. Then, carefully sand out the rest of the scratch � I wouldn�t use a grit coarser than 600 grit, if possible. Work your way up to 1000 or 1200 grit, then begin with the finer grades of steel wool.
The steel wool is actually a pain to use, so you might try buffing the area with the softest, finest 3M scotch brite wheel you can find (powered by a hand grinder). Follow this up with the finest-grit scotch brite pad (that�s how I prefer to do it). Finally, to speed up the polishing itself, treat the now completly smoothed area as new paint, and buff it out using 3M Finess-it II compound, or a similar finishing compound, and a buffing pad. After that, a little wax adds the last bit of shine, plus the usual protection against oxidation. � Mike Valant
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