Shiny aluminum

[jondrew55]

If I ever became a tech billionaire I'd want to collect vintage airplanes. P-51s, P-38a, F-86, maybe even restore my own B-29 if I could find enough parts. But the one thing I would insist on from the restoration team is they all have that highly polished aluminum look. I guess with AS's new protected aluminum it's virtually impossible to polish a late model to that kind of finish. I did a cursory search of the interweb and could not find anything on polishing later models. Obviously I have no intention of ever doing this, I'm just wondering if anyone has stripped the protective coatings off newer models and buffed them out? I think they'd look awesome.

[markdoane]

Yes you can strip off the clearcoat, but the underlying alloy will never polish to a finish like the old vintage trailers.

The old trailers were made with Alclad aluminum, which had a very thin layer of pure aluminum on the surface which could be polished to shine like a mirror.

Same with the P-51.