polishing plastic on a wheel?

[Possum]

Is anyone polishing plastic on a polishing wheel? If so what compound is used? I"ve got a nice Harbor Freight polishing arbor I use to polish bucker covers, wonder if it could be used to polish plastic....

[Joe Gwinn]

Is anyone polishing plastic on a polishing wheel? If so what compound is used? I"ve got a nice Harbor Freight polishing arbor I use to polish bucker covers, wonder if it could be used to polish plastic....

Sure. People buff (=polish) the lacquer on guitar bodies with a cloth wheel and rouge, so it is possible. The main thing to avoid is overheating the plastic. What kind of plastic is it?

[Possum]

....

Its whatever humbucker bobbins are made of, its pretty soft stuff. wondering if there are any specific plastic polishes in bar form like for metal. Rouge is kind of a do-all polish, when I did jewelry work we never use that stuff on anything. Zam or Fabulustre for final and tripoli for cutting.

[spud1950]

Zam or Fabulustre for final and tripoli for cutting.

I have a lot of polishing experience.Zam works great on a lot of plastics, bone, ivory, etc. as well as metals.I've never used it on bobbin plastic, which is rather soft, but I think it would work fine as long as you maintain light pressure and don't allow any heat buildup. I also have Fabulstre and it works the same as Zam on plastics and other similar materials. I agree with you on rouge. It's nasty,messy stuff. Zam or Fabulustre work just as well and are far less messier.

[Possum]

....

Hmmm, duh, I'll give it a try. I know Zam is used for polishing turquoise which is awful soft stuff, I once left a nice turquoise bracelet in an ultrasonic cleaner too long and it pitted the stone, ouch...

[spud1950]

I don't know exactly what kind of plastic is used for bobbins. I imagine there are different types depending on the manufacturer. You got me curious, so I did a little experiment. I only have a few loose pickups,one of them being a Fender humbucker. Actually,the bobbin plastic is fairly hard. I hit the top of one of the bobbins with some Zam with a soft cotton buff on my Dremel. Didn't do any pre polishing to get any scratches out, but it put a very nice sheen on the plastic.

[Ruel]

I once used 3M rubbing compound for car finishes with good results. But I did it manually.

[Sweetfinger]

Get yourself down to the local custom auto paint supply store. They should have all kinds of buffing supplies for plastics. When buffing plastics, it is really easy to eat the material away. A soft touch is a must.

These guys are near you, and if they don't have what you're looking for, they'll know who does.

http://www.pacificcoastsignsupply.com/contact.htm

My local go-to store:

http://www.spaceagepaint.com/custom.aspx?id=7

[Rosewood]

Meguires #7 will do it.

[jonson]

compounds

Doing it all the time here in uk but compounds from uk suppliers. USA compounds that are the same Possum would be the white plastic ones from Caswell. Wev'e been down this road before.
http://www.caswellplating.com/buffs/compound4.html

[spud1950]

USA compounds that are the same Possum would be the white plastic ones from Caswell.

Fabulustre seems to be pretty much identical.

https://jawproducts.authsecure.com/f...tre-p-236.html

This looks interesting. It's for polishing plastic watch crytals.

https://jawproducts.authsecure.com/c...wer-p-248.html

[Possum]

....

I already have a Fabulustre wheel so tried it tonite on a black bobbin and it works really well unless you use too much pressure and linger too long, I purposefully scratched one up and it did a real good job of making it look new again....

[kevinT]

I have a buffing wheel from harbor freight too and tried buffing a scratched bobbin. First time I ended up burning off some of the plastic. I also used a polishing compound that was black that i got from Caswell's supplier..it was their p-19 product...i can't think of the name of the supplier but it starts with the letter F. It also made one heck of a mess....black powdery stuff everywhere. And it didn't give the bobbin surface a very glossy finish similar to brand new bobbin....had a dull shine look to it if that makes sense. I ended up buying a different compound from Caswell, but I haven't tried it yet because I need to get a new buffing wheel after my last ordeal.

Hopefully this new stuff, which is white and specifically for final finishing of plastics, will take out the fine scratches as well as give the bobbin's surface a high gloss.

I'm currently using the aquirium polishing kit. The liquid polish in that kit works wonders as well as the 8000 to 12000 grit sandpaper.

[Stan H]

Hmmm...I use toothpaste and a rag.

[jonson]

wheels

95% of the job is the choice of wheels. For polishing plastics soft or hard acrylic then the main answer is an airflow or vented mop. These keep the work a lot cooler and you only use light pressure. Rub out any deep scratches first with very fine "1500" grit and upwards wet and dry paper then half the work is done. Don't use the mop to try and get deep scratches out. Keep the mop clean for next use by a foot length of 2x1 with a dozen 2inch nails hammered through the centre and use as a hedgehog rake to get the old compound out as when this is dry it just piles on more scratches. any compound left on the bobbin will come away with an alcohol swab and if you wish, a final colouring or polish can be done with a Swansdown or very soft unstitched mop. Acrylic comes up like glass with a fair bit of pressure but pup bobbins you should just back that off a bit. Don't mix different grade compounds on the same mop (sorry buff) keep seperate wheels for different grades. Not too fast a speed about 1500 up to 2500 is fine for plastics and polyester etc and 5000/6000 for nickel and stainless.