Polishing paintwork

[Pudnucker]

Hi guys,

Had a/c resprayed about 5 years ago. she's a pa28 and was done with a fairly standard 2 pack paint.

It's turned quite Matte in appearance. I've tried a cutting compound (g3) but doing it by hand isn't restoring the shine. I have the offer of borrowing an electric polisher (mop). Im thinking of using g3 again (with a LOT) of water to prevent burning. Then will use a wax polish.

Has anyone else done this? Any tips?

I think I read somewhere that grounding the airframe is a good idea in case of static build up. An earth cable and spike would be easy to create..

Look forward to reading your views..

Cheers - p

[Ultranomad]

3M makes two polishing fluids: Hand Glaze and Machine Glaze. I've never used them on aircraft, but on cars they do a wonderful job.

[flybymike]

I think the golden rule is "Don't use T-Cut"

[Pilot DAR]

Determine just what kind of paint first. If it's dull after five years, I'd be wondering why. If the paint used for the repaint was Imron, or Aluminigrip, it should have held a good shine for a lot longer than that. If one of those two, or a similar quality paint was used, you may find it hard to polish, it's just tough paint (I've got imron, and I've tried.)

If it is a softer paint, compounds will work on it. Refering to products available in North America, I prefer Turtle Wax "Polishing" Compound. I do not use Turtle Wax "Rubbing" Compound for two reasons: Polishing compound is white, and rubbing compound is rusty red colour. If you're polishing white paint, the rubbing compound will stain the white paint, and be miserable to remove. Further to that, as it is more coarse, it tends to put in scratches which are challenging to remove (particularly the red ones). The white compound is finer, and white. It will take longer, but I prefer the outcome.

After that, a good wash, then "Wax". Choose a good quality "wax" which is white in colour (assuming that most of your plane is). I once tried a product called "Rain Dance" which was blue. I had a little blue circle around every rivet, lots of work to clean off. "Nu Finish" is white, and produces a very pleasing result.

With any product use great care to not polish or rub right through the paint, particularly with soft paint. That said, if you have a really tough polishing problem, extremely fine sandpaper will work. By fine, I mean "grit" numbers more than a thousand. Preferably several thousand. This paper can be hard to find, but a source for small quantities, you'll find it in automotive headlight polishing kits. Don't sand through the paint!

As for static, I can't argue your wisdom, but I would not get too excited about this. You're probably standing on the ground, and thus grounded yourself. I also doubt that you have the personal endurance to rub enough to build up a harmful amount of static, but you can't go wrong bonding things!

A clean shiny plane is a delight, and you'll pick up a little speed... Well, it'll feel like it....

[1800ed]

I know a guy who's good at paint restoration. He mainly does cars but is branching out doing boats, so maybe he could be of help with aircraft? He seems to travel about a fair bit and his website is: Car Valeting | Car Detailing | Leather Repairs | West Sussex | East Sussex | Surrey | Hampshire (http://www.refineddetail.co.uk/)

[Johnm]

Propwash at Coventry do mobile aircraft cleaning and polishing and just did a superb job of two aeroplanes at Gloucester including mine.

Two blokes for a whole day isn't cheap but the results are incredible.

There's also an outfit that turns up at White waltham to do aircraft there.

[kui2324]

Pudnucker,

I had 15-20 year old oxidised paint on my aircraft when I bought it 3 years ago. The dark blue oxidised very well to a very dull matt.

I used the G3 and G10 along with Mer to finish. It took a huge amount of elbow grease! But it had to be done by hand, HWMBO is a light aircraft engineer and would not recommend an electric polisher for a variety of reasons.

Farecla also do a uv wax polish - so once it does polish up you can protect it. Will try and dig out the pictures to show how well it came out later. Unfortunately being parked outside in a south facing position some parts need doing again! :{

[kui2324]

Before
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/kui2324/007.jpg

After ( and it was lots and lots of elbow grease!)
http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af77/kui2324/008.jpg

[Pudnucker]

Thanks for the replies.. I used a mop (basically an angle grinder with a
Foam head on it) lots of water and G3. It came up like new. The paint was way too hard for doing it by hand. I then used Mer hybrid wax and Autoglym extra gloss protection... took about 5 hours.. knackered but worth it!

[IO540]

It won't make your plane go any faster :)

[Pudnucker]

But it feels silkier than my wife's bottom...