Has anybody polished their aluminum cans? I was working with mine lastnight and the saw blade got gummed up with aluminum and even though I had them wrapped in bubble wrap, the pounding of them up and down scratched the bottom. So I need to buff them and wondering if anybody has done this and what they used. Thanks
Home Depot sells a kit.. you need a polishing wheel and some polishing rouge. It is easier to do when it is warm outside as heat plays a big part in the polishing of the part. Be forewarned, it does take time. Also make sure you don't have a clear coat on it, it may not match the other can(s) if you take the clear coat off of only only one of the cans.
I bought a cotton wheel and put it on one side of my old grinder. I have been using it to polish some brackets I made out of aluminum angle. You probably need to first sand out the rough spots if there are any, use a fine emery cloth. Next use a stiff wheel and a heavy rouge to do the rough polishing. Finally you can hand polish out the machine marks using a cloth diaper with Mothers or Hapich Semi-Chrome coupound. If you take your time and work the process through the cans will look better then new, waaay better.
At one point I polished a ski pylon that was in my boat. I wet sanded it with 1500 then used mothers aluminum polish. It worked pretty good. I guess it depends on how deep the scratches that you have are. The mothers aluminum polish works pretty well, I would try that first. I also used it on my board racks to get rid of some of the water stains. Here are a couple of pics of the pylon I did.
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