My polishing thread..

[dklimek]

My mom buys and sells campers as a buisness and I commonly do sidework for her on the trailers, well she recently aquired a few more airstreams that have seen their better days and could use a real nice polish job. The first one I am doing is a 1965 Overlander 26'...unfortunately it has some dents and pretty heavy scratches on the drivers side of the camper from where the PO had caught a tree or something similiar with the camper. Hopefully they will come out with some polish, or worst case scenario i guess i am wetsanding..any ideas on what grit to get?

I am going to be picking up most of the supplies today..so wish me luck!

I will have some before/during progress pics for you guys later today.

[dklimek]

Small update*

Spent all day running around gathering most materials, and today began to remove the clear coat. I must say that the citristrip works EXCELLENT!! Though tracking it down locally was a bit of a pain. I forgot to take some "before" pictures before i started, but i took some pictures of sections we hadn't started on yet and will have some after pictures after i pressure wash it clean. It seems as though there is some pretty cloudy oxidation on some parts of the camper from where the clear coat had started to wear off, and alot more scratches then you could see to begin with . Hopefully they will all polish out.

Before I start to polish, I need to order the nuvite wax...any recommendations on what kind and how much i need to get based on my campers conditions?

[juel]

I'd like to see pictures of how that scratch comes out.

[sequoiacoast]

I used 1 G7 and 2 F9s, 1 C and 1 S have yet to be used. I may have over-used, but I had a lot of corrosion. Good luck.

[Melody Ranch]

I used Nuvite.

If you are doing this commercially you should look at several other polishes.
Search these forums for good....and inexpensive ones...
Polishing a dent, a bad one, reminds me of a silk purse/sows ear analogy.

[InsideOut]

Everything we ever learned about polishing can be found on the Perfect Polish website and in the "school of hard knocks"!



Spend some time there - it will not be time wasted.

Shari

[urbanfood]

great article from vintage trailer supply. discusses the different grades of nuvite and which to use when.

Vintage Trailer Supply - Vintage travel trailer parts and supplies!

[dklimek]

Started the polishing monday, and got alot of the front of the camper today. We are having alot of issues with it having a hazy shine to it, even using mineral spirits to make sure that we have all the excess polish off before we make another pass. Also its a PITA when you go to polish the corrosion towards the top of the camper....we have to stop and clean our pads every 2-3 passes!! Any solutions/tips?? We are using the jestco products, since my mom had already orded them months ago and there wouldnt be any wait time on the polishing.

should have progress pictures up tomorrow..

[InsideOut]

"Hazy shine" sounds like you aren't all the way through the oxidation layer yet...this may need several (5-10) passes to achieve. Also sounds like you may be using too much polishing media...but I'm not familiar with the Jestco Products to know for sure - with the Nuvite, if you use too much it just smears around and doesn't work - it lubricates the pad instead of letting the product cut and do the work.

Maybe your pictures will help...

Shari

[dklimek]

Here are some progress pictures from the other day...
I will take some more after we are done today.
Before:

After:





The Citristrip in action..


The mentioned scratch..

Pressure washing the clearcoat off..


We have found out that it must be the polish hazing up from the heat, if you go over it with mineral oil and then dry it with a seperate clean rag it clears up.

[dklimek]

We are using the double sided screw on buffer pads that you can get at most any auto stores that carry auto body supplies and have had some good results. We just reclean them and reuse them since they get so nasty from all the oxidation.