Tips on polishing?

[valdez25]

PS I have a spray bottle with stoddard solvent in it that I use to clean and break down the polish around rivets, seams, and hard to reach areas. I apply polish, hit it with the buffer, spray it down, and hit it with the buffer again. This extends the polish, and really helps during the initial polish of old, scratched metal. It helps keep the metal cool too. THIS IS ONLY FOR THE INITIAL STEP ON OLD METAL, and boy is it messy, but it'll work on your cowlings, I guarantee. (Mine looked pretty janky, but this technique with Rolite Pre-Polish got the job done.)

[valdez25]

PSS Get a good buffer. I bought the variable speed Makita wth wool bonnets, and a cyclo polisher if you're looking for the "show shine". http://www.topoftheline.com/makita-poli ... uffer.html You can clean the wool bonnets with TSP (Tri Sodium Phosphate) from Lowes or Home Depot.

[Chief]

The Air Force One guys used corn starch during the final buffing to help remove streaks.

[Django]

Thanks guys for the ongoing tips. A friend of mine took a look at it on Friday, he came to the same conclusion on the Alclad. I took a DA to it with 120 grit, and it is smoothing it out quite a bit. I don't know if it will get mirror finish, but it is slowly starting to look like maybe I didn't screw it up for good this time.

[Steve Pierce]

I started with a low speed buffer and then used the Cyclo polisher to get the swirls out.