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Polished Aluminum Finish

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Daniel S.

Well Known Member
Hey all-
I know this is a long way off for me but I'm wanting to explore what it takes to have a partial polished aluminum finish. Meaning that some parts will be painted (wing tips, canopy fairing / skirts ect.) and the rest being polished aluminum. Can polished aluminum be clearcoated to avoid the heavy maintenance of bare polished aluminum? I've talked with a few local guys, but most all seem fuzzy on the topic... I'm fishing for real info here. I'm sure that there has to be some sort of 20th century way of protecting polished aluminum and avoiding the PITA maintaining raw polished aluminum.

Thanks all!!!
 
Daniel S. said:
Hey all-
I know this is a long way off for me but I'm wanting to explore what it takes to have a partial polished aluminum finish. Meaning that some parts will be painted (wing tips, canopy fairing / skirts ect.) and the rest being polished aluminum. Can polished aluminum be clearcoated to avoid the heavy maintenance of bare polished aluminum? I've talked with a few local guys, but most all seem fuzzy on the topic... I'm fishing for real info here. I'm sure that there has to be some sort of 20th century way of protecting polished aluminum and avoiding the PITA maintaining raw polished aluminum.

Thanks all!!!
Click to expand...

Daniel,

All I can say is I owned one polished airplane and I won't own another. Way to much work for me. Would take me a week to polish and it would start to dull before you would get done. Hard to keep corrosion off.
 
Couple of local planes don't have anything on the aluminum at all. Just the alclad coating. They keep it clean and seems to hold up just fine.

From experience, if you don't prep aluminum for painting it won't stick. Polish seems like the polar opposite of aluminum prep. I think if you put clear coat on top of polish bad things would happen.

I painted my plane. Base coat + clear coat. Would do the same again. It holds up great, looks good and is easy to keep clean. Very low maintenance.
 
I have a polished plane (not my RV) that I LOVE! And I do not mind polishing it.

You want to use Nuvite (www.nuvitechemical.com).

See www.perfectpolish.com fir a dealer with some great accessories such as Cyclos and soft cloth. For some reason the embedded graphics on that site are broken today, but the company is very much in business.

Mike
 
There are also post-polish metal protectors available. I have used this one and it seemed to work well on my non-painted aluminum, polished wheels.


cleaners and polishes

I also like the Liqui-tech metal polish, easy to use. Never tried it on an entire plane though!
 
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