A few months ago I ordered one of the home made top-trims from Bredgeo, our resident handy-man, and he sent me an aluminium trim piece which fit perfectly. He had varnished it for me, but I wanted to have that 'chrome' finish which the rest of trim on my M90 has.

So, I searched on the net and discovered that aluminium can be shined up to a mirror like finish. In fact, these aluminium mirrors are used for surgical procedures and are precise to within a whatever of a whatever (very scientific).

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and try to polish up my aluminium trim and discovered that if you steal, borrow your girlfriends fingernail buffing pad, and finish it off with some plastic polish, you get a decent result.

Here are the tools I used as well as the results. Hope this helps someone out there!

Nice job, that trim polished up well.

This looks great, BeatBox. Can you give some more info on the products you used. This xeropol is just a plastic polish? So you put this stuff on the trim piece and basically sanded it shiny with the fingernail pad? The little boombox is really cool too!

That looks great! Nice Job! Dremel polishing tools are great for shining up plastic also.

ALL RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Beat, Did you have to take of the varnish, that was spray painted on the trim, off or did that just rub off while using the nail buffer???????????????????????????????????????????

Or is it the varnish that takes the shininess????



Oh, and thanks for telling me to look!!!!!

__________________________________________________

Appelknocker,

I might be sending yours to Beat for the finishing job!!!!!!!!

Is that okay with you Beat?

That trim's lookin' good, beatbox.

I want an M90 soooooo bad! I actually may have had a chance of getting one a year ago, but felt it wasn't 'absolutely necessary' at the time. I let it go, and kicked myself for it almost straight away. I didn't realise then, how much I really want one!!

Hey guys,

Firstly thanks for the comments. I stumbled across this by accident really. I was cleaning my box and rubbed a bit to hard causing the varnish to come of the trim. I decided to take it all off as it was now patchy.

I then looked up polishing aluminium on the off-chance that it could be done, and what do you know!?

So basically, the nail buffer has 3 different surfaces with different amounts of coarsness. The first side is actually the reverse of the buffer to what you see above. It is a very fine, dark emery or sand paper. The next stage is the white section of the buffer which is an incredibly fine paper which removes more scratches etc from the aluminium to a very fine finish. The last section is the buffer, which has an almost negligible amount of coarseness to it.

I then finished it all of with the Polish which gives it a bit of shine.

I could go and do it all again and get it mirror-like, but the box is 25+ years old and I don't think it needs such a shiny trim on it!

Anyway, hope this helps!

Brian, for the price of shipping, you could pick up one of these buffers yourself from any chemist or fantasically fine females fancy fingernail factory...

Mine cost my girlfriend around 4 euros.

Well, good luck and hope this helps!

Nice work there Beatbox

What a great discovery! But don't take the M90 outside. The sunlight might catch the polished trim just right and blind somebody.

Hey, I wonder if that mini boombox is small enough for Nicolle?

Good going beatbox! Aluminum can really be brightened up! I did this to a set of wheels a few years back. If you didn't want to use a nail file you could do what I did. Go grab some 3M auto sand paper. Start somewhere around 400-800 grit (depending on what it looks like to start and how much varnish needs to be removed) and move up to 1000, 1500 and end with 2000, then hit it with Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish and it will be a perfect mirror.

quote:

Brian, for the price of shipping, you could pick up one of these buffers yourself from any chemist or fantasically fine females fancy fingernail factory...

That "Female" place you so nicely discribed is really an area I hang around a lot......

I think I will go to the chemist's, or.................. take Odette's!

OH.... But one thing Beat!

From what I understand, aluminum (if not protected from the elements) will start getting those white streaks and stuff... or you might get nothing.

But, I think you should re-varnish it with a neutral aluminum varnish now that it is nice and shiny.... just a suggestion.

Man that looks purdy!
love to see a shot of the whole
radio cause I can't get enough of an
M-90