Polishing bicycle parts
Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2012 9:41 am
I always had a soft spot for polished bicycle parts, but up until recently I had never been able to achieve the high polish look I was looking for.
The change has been brought about by the purchase of a polishing machine, two different polishing wheels and two different polishing compounds. That is pretty much all it takes to get a nice finish on aluminium bike parts. Before I used hand polishing compounds and a rag and a polishing wheel you can insert into a drill, but neither gave the results I wanted.
Attached are a couple of pictures of a pair of C-Record hubs I polished yesterday. Unlike most bicycle parts, early Campagnolo hubs are not anodized, making them a great starting point for learning how to polish stuff. First you need to clean the outside of the hub thoroughly (I used Finish Line speed degreaser). Then you start to polish the hub using the cotton disc and the matching compound for this disc. You will need to apply some pressure to get the disc to do its trick. Use gloves while doing this because the part you are polishing will get hot (that is if you are doing it right). You can see the results of your labour within seconds, which is pretty cool. After you finish polishing the hub with the cotton disc, clean it again to remove any polishing compound. Now you repeat the process with a flannel disc and the matching compound. Again you will see major improvement almost instantly. The final step is to clean the hub again and give it a coat of (liquid) wax for the ultimate shine. All this took me under an hour.
If you want to polish an anodized part, you will have to remove the anodizing first. Doing this is pretty tricky and requires using lye. I have yet to do this successfully, but apparently in the US they sell Easy-Off oven cleaner which is great for this.
The change has been brought about by the purchase of a polishing machine, two different polishing wheels and two different polishing compounds. That is pretty much all it takes to get a nice finish on aluminium bike parts. Before I used hand polishing compounds and a rag and a polishing wheel you can insert into a drill, but neither gave the results I wanted.
Attached are a couple of pictures of a pair of C-Record hubs I polished yesterday. Unlike most bicycle parts, early Campagnolo hubs are not anodized, making them a great starting point for learning how to polish stuff. First you need to clean the outside of the hub thoroughly (I used Finish Line speed degreaser). Then you start to polish the hub using the cotton disc and the matching compound for this disc. You will need to apply some pressure to get the disc to do its trick. Use gloves while doing this because the part you are polishing will get hot (that is if you are doing it right). You can see the results of your labour within seconds, which is pretty cool. After you finish polishing the hub with the cotton disc, clean it again to remove any polishing compound. Now you repeat the process with a flannel disc and the matching compound. Again you will see major improvement almost instantly. The final step is to clean the hub again and give it a coat of (liquid) wax for the ultimate shine. All this took me under an hour.
If you want to polish an anodized part, you will have to remove the anodizing first. Doing this is pretty tricky and requires using lye. I have yet to do this successfully, but apparently in the US they sell Easy-Off oven cleaner which is great for this.