IW, you are right, of course.
I have one last small update before I head off to work for three weeks. I turned on the Tour De France last night to watch yesterdays stage. I figured I would get a little done on the bike while watching the race. I decided I would do one of my favorite things. (not) More polishing. Except, this piece was really rough. The stator cover had seen better days.
I started out with this scratched up, dented piece. First, I block and hand sanded the deep scratches out with sand papaer. I started with 80 grit because there were some reall nasty gouges. From there I worked through 120, 400, 600, and 1000 grit. I only used the 80 and 120 on the really bad areas. After sanding, I used emery, tripoli, and finally white rouge buffing compounds with my bench grinder. With each compound I went to progressively softer wheels.
The start...actually I guess that I had started a little sanding with 80 grit by this point.
I'm pretty sure this is after sanding out the scratches through 120 grit. I did not get every scratch out, but most are gone.
It's a dirty job, but someones got to do it.
I'm pretty sure this is after wet sanding 400, 600, and 1000
First cut with emery compound...before cleaning for the next step.
after the tripoli compound. All cleaned up and ready for the white rouge.
After white rouge....all done, except for maybe a little hand polishing if I really feel like it.
I don't know if this is the right way to polish....I think I got this technique off the Caswell site. Once again, not perfect, but pretty good. It seems I always have a few errant sanding scratches that I don't get out. Of course, considering that I had to use 80 grit to get the gouges out, it looks good. There were scratches all over this thing.