Got my hands a bit dirty and started to regrain the second hand metal rails I've salvaged from an old pinball table. The results were actually a lot better than I expected, although not finished yet - take a look...
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| 1) Tools of the trade - sanding block, various sanding papers of varying coarseness. What's not seen in this picture is the Scotch 3M rotating brush that I used for the heavy scratches. |
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| 2) A piece of metal rail before any work has been done. |
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| 3) Here we got a comparison shot between an untouched piece and another piece that has been worked on for about a minute. We're already seeing quite a difference! |
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| 4) The "finished" piece after a couple of minutes of grinding. Note that this was the one with the heavy scratching in the pictures above. Huge difference! |
I never expected the results to come so easy, so fast.
I will not do any more work right now since the parts must be cut, bent and modified to become a part of my machine. In that process it's more than likely new scratching will occur, so I'll do the final sanding and buffing after that.
The piece above has had two rather coarse treatments. Before installing they will receive at least two more + buffing so they get that brand new look!
This guy has a page with a really good guide on polishing metal. Unfortunately most of the page is in Swedish besides the linked one, but -
If you look at the results it's easy to see why regraining is well worth the effort!
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