Okay, let’s face it, no matter how much each of us knows, we always have a weak spot. My Achilles Heel is polishing and I need the Polish God to come to my aid.
I’ve read other posts including a good one from Spence about polishing methods circa 1990’s. I have polished a lot of boards with many different approaches going back all the way into the 70’s. Some had terrific results and other days were not so great. Honestly, I don’t handle a candle to Bahne’s polisher back in the days of Wayne glassing and Peter Pinliner doing all those tiny red white and blue pins in the same size as everyone else single pins.
So with that being said, and other than the obvious fact that I hate polishing compared to any other facet of board building someone has got to ease my pain with some hidden gem of a tip for fixing burns quickly and easily as I polish some “we want them shiny” orders. I have a lot of hair on my head but won’t soon unless The Polishing God finds me.
You need info…okay so here goes. Boards we are talking about are glassed with 6 oz and 4 oz. and laminated and hotcoated using Silamr 1421 Iso Ortho blend. I considered changing the ‘gloss’ to Reichold finishing resin but Wade at FH said the 1421 is pretty hard because of it being the blend (being the difference in hardness of iso and ortho). I wondered if maybe I was overdosing on surfacing agent which is wax and styrene…and I don’t add additional styrene but do add a pretty healthy (2 to 3 oz’s) of surfacing as this is UV resin and I definitely want the wax to come up. Some people have trouble using UV for hotcoats but all ya gotta do is look and wait til you see the wax has come up.
Sanding…waves and crap from laps or additional patches are blocked for trueness. Good Power Pads are used not sub standard sanding pads. I go finer grit (120 to 150 tops) on the flats and 60 to 80 (tops) on the rail. Why? Because with less tooth on the flats less resin load up is attained keeping weight down where there is less likelihood to burn thru to the weave. Where the curve and verticals are I leave it rougher so there is more tooth for the resin to load into leaving less chance to burn thru.
Sanding with the usual variety of grits depending on the quality of gloss (using a good brush) is not out of the norm. Using 220 grit is generally the coarsest I’d start out with but more like 320 is the norm. These can be dry or wet…plenty of guys do a lot of dry sanding and I started doing this later on from my early days of polising where I even used a hose running and was heavily insulated while doing this…yeah sure, I miraculously lived thru that era. Then I change to squeeze bottles and the drop of dishwashing liquid…and so on. I finish with 500 or 600 using buffing and polishing pads as necessary…haven’t gone the liquid ebony route in a long time to get rid of wheel marks but have been there done that.
So my question is burns…who has the quick and easiest way to fix burn thrus? My method has been to sand the area with coarser grit the graduate out to the fine grits so the resin grabs where it is needed and flattens out where I want it to fair in. It is still very difficult not to get rid of the fine shiny hairline between the two so that they are perfeclt blending virtually disappearing. And it is ever so easy to burn thru agai, if not on the original spot then right near it.
Who wants to sit there doing it over and over again until you get it right…having to sand and prep a much larger area so you can gradually fair it in w/out burns? I don’t think3 or 4 coats of Future acrylic works…maybe the stuff yellows horibly too? Some guys used “Hard as Nails” nail polish for small rail burns but what about on or near the flat?
Maybe I have to gloss with a lot more resin netting a heavier more brittle board?
Where is my Polishing God?