MID POLISH
FINAL POLISH
So the number one question we get, by far, is how long did it take to polish Tess? And that’s a bit of a tough question because when we bought her she had already been polished and looked pretty nice, but it had been a while so she was stained and starting to regain a bit of the aluminum patina. But we did not start from “ground zero”- the clear coat had been removed and it was fairly shiny. Our total estimated hours are at the bottom of the post!
Now as a side note, I have restored a few cars and was very interested in the car culture for a long time. And at any car show there is always that “one guy” who picks apart every flaw and imperfection he finds. When he’s doing it to his own car it is not a problem, he’s just being OCD about the quality of his work. When he starts doing it to other people’s cars he has crossed a line and NOBODY likes that guy.
At this point I was working on the bathroom remodel and while I occasionally needed help, the space is so limited inside there isn’t much room for two people working. So Melinda took on the job of polishing, which she could do while I was inside, and still be close by for when I needed help. We’re a good team that way.
We decided we weren’t going to go crazy though- we’d do a 90% job, something that looked good from 5-10 feet away but not so obsessed with the details that they would stand up to super close inspection. As any elite athlete, car racer, auto restorer, artist… any activity that requires time and effort knows, the first 90% takes time and effort but is relatively easy to achieve. The next 10% gets progressively harder and let’s face it, the top 5% of anything is nearly impossible. We don’t even want to go there, 90% of shine on a camper that is hauled down the road, in the elements, is just fine. We are, I mean I am, absolutely, positively not going to be “that guy”.
We bought, and recommend, a dual head polisher like the Cyclo (now owned by Rupes)– ours was a knockoff and worked great, but those seem to have disappeared online. You can also use a single head orbital buffer like this but we found the dual head works best to minimize swirl marks. Unless you are very skilled, a buffing wheel on a grinder or linear polisher can create too much heat too quickly and make heat marks on the aluminum. I’m not saying they are bad, a lot of professionals use them, but they leave little room for error. And I’d go for either a corded one, or a name brand cordless version- the constant running would go through batteries very fast, and no name cordless tools often have cheap batteries that aren’t readily available so saving a few bucks on the purchase might cost you more in the end.
You’ll also need some mineral spirits, foam pads, wool pads and microfiber towels- we went through probably 50 towels! As far as polish goes, we tried the expensive aluminum airplane polishs and they worked ok, but honestly we had the best luck and least swirls just using Mothers Aluminum Polish, and it was the least expensive of everything we used.
Our procedure was this- after a good wash, we filled a spray bottle with mineral spirits and wiped down the area we’d be working. The foam pads come in different degrees of coarseness based on the color. Because we were already polished we primarily stayed in the three finest grades, starting the most coarse of the three, we’d apply small amounts of polish with our finger about every 6 inches in our polishing area (usually a foot square or so). Then we’d run the cyclo over it until the polish on the aluminum turns black and then the black starts coming off. Then we’d wipe down the area with a microfiber and repeat with the next finest foam pad. Then we’d finish that with a wool pad… but for the final polish we’d just use the microfiber towel pulled tightly across the polishing heads (with a wool pad underneath) and buff it that way. You’d kind of need to develop your own style and pattern, but that will get you started.
Now the keen reader will notice that there seems to be a LOT of polishing happening…. perhaps even more than 90% polished- and you would be right! the polishing was going great, but the rivets all had a very dark circle around them and it was driving me a little crazy- the rest of the aluminum looked so good and rivets looked so not good. So I got a little cone shaped foam polisher for my drill and tried polishing them that way, which kind of worked. But then I took a small metal pick and went around each rivet, followed that with a plastic scraper and more drill polishing. I had originally planned on just doing the easy to see rivets by the door and curbside, but there might have been some scope creep involved, since I was there, and I ended up doing all of the rivets, even the ones on the roof that no one could see but me. Every. Single. Rivet. Which by my count, equaled 1542 rivets. And since we were there, and all the rivets looked good, I figured we might as well take it to the next level of polish. And so despite Melinda thinking her boyfriend was more than a little crazy she jumped in and kept polishing with me and in the end we hit 100%! Well no, not really, probably only 94-95%. Maybe 96%. I can still see all the flaws and if you give me a few minutes I’ll point them out to you…. and just like that I had become “that guy”, the one I didn’t want to be… but I’m only picky about our camper, so I don’t cross the line and pay any attention to how other people have polished their campers- unless they are friends and we have a little friendly competition!
And since we were there, I put Captain Tolley’s Creeping Crack Cure on all the rivets. This is a marine sealant you can put in cracks and rivets that gets sucked into any tiny cracks and helps seal them up. It goes on easy and cleans up easy and helps prevent water intrusion from the rivets. Well worth the time and effort required. We also tried Johns 360 ceramic coating (twice) which was well reviewed and quite pricey but had less than great results. It might have been user error, but based on our experience it was not worth the effort or money required.
So how long did it take us…how many hours do we have invested? We think that we have someplace between 150-200 hours, spread out over a couple of months. It’s quite an investment of time and effort- do we think it is worth it? Tess is really beautiful and we love the shine, so to us it is- but to keep that level of shine requires at LEAST one good polish per year, but only about 15-20 hours to maintain it. I’m not sure if we bought another camper that we’d do the brilliant shine again though, I’m just not sure it would be worth doing- we’d rather be out camping!
Items Used:
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Cyclo (now owned by Rupes)
Foam pads, wool pads and microfiber towels
Captain Tolley’s Creeping Crack Cure