What’s the next best way to polish a piston without a lathe? Appreciate everyone’s help.
What’s the next best way to polish a piston without a lathe?
- Thread starter Arnie
- Start date
I have polished pistons a couple of different ways. One way I have used is to place the piston in a vise or clamp and wet sand it using very fine grit sand paper. This can do a very good job of polishing if done correctly. It can then be given a final touch with a Dremel tool with a small buffing wheel attached using a bit of jewelers rouge compound. I have used this method on pistons as wells as compression tubes on under-lever rifles.
Upvote 0
I chuck mine in a drill or drill press and polish using 400-600 grit emery then metal polishing compound. If you are going to use a power drill I would recommend that you clamp it carefully in a vise.
Bill
Bill
Upvote 0
I have some older pics here of how I did a compression tube for a HW97 one time with the wet sanding part and just a clamp on my desk. Works the same for a piston.....
This is a pic of the sanding process that I used on that occasion....use very fine grit. What I used here actually finished very well and then the Dremel with the buffing wheel and jewelers rouge. This is only one of a couple of pics that I could find that I had on this process I used. Hope it helps.
This is a pic of the sanding process that I used on that occasion....use very fine grit. What I used here actually finished very well and then the Dremel with the buffing wheel and jewelers rouge. This is only one of a couple of pics that I could find that I had on this process I used. Hope it helps.
Upvote 0
unless its really rough just a hand job can turn out beautiful .. id just go over it several times with 600 to get it looking even then once with 800 or 1000 then rub it out with blue magic .. personally i wouldnt put a dremel on it, usually its hard to get an even surface on larger objects digging at it with a tiny dremel even if it looks shiney .. if you have a giant drill that could chuck it, that can work .. but yeah hand job should turn out nice with the blue magic ... on the tube what ive done before is use a large patch holder for something big like a 45 and fold an appropriate size piece of 600 or so and make a honing 'flapper' i can chuck in a drill .. with a few changeouts and a final hit with some blue magic on a piece of rag you can get it like a mirror ... just take it slow on the drill in the beginninh until you get it setup to work even and smooth so your rod dont get out of sorts ...
Upvote 0
Like said above by Dizzums, polishing a piston by hand is easily accomplished. I did the piston in my HW95 with the Mothers mag polish and a soft clothe. Probably 15 minutes and half of a beer!
Upvote 0
I have always used a cordless drill to chuck up the piston stem, then use fine emery cloth in the other hand to polish the piston while holding the drill. Simple, quick, and easy. I vary the grit depending on how good or bad the piston is. Compression tubes are just as easy, I have a couple old screw drivers with plastic handles that are close in size to the comp tubes I want to polish. These are phillips style screw drivers so they also chuck up into my cordless drill. Add a couple/ few wraps of duct tape around the handle until you have a snug fit into the comp tube. Once again chuck this up in your cordless drill and a piece of emery cloth in the opposite hand and polish away. Keep im mind we are only polishing, not removing any significant amount of metal, so if it doesnt run quite true, it is fine!! Just like crosshatching inside a break barrel compression tube holds minut amounts of lube, this same principle can aplly to the piston.... You dont need fancy apparatus to do simple polishing on your springers internal parts, I choose a cordless drill over electric corded as I can control the speed much better and of course dont have to be near an electrical outlet!!!!
Upvote 0
Arnie, I have played around with a few. But I would recommend something in the range of 1000-2000 grit paper. I have polished some springer parts to a mirror finish doing it this way without the use of any type of buffing wheel. I mentioned the buffing wheel on a Dremel in my previous answer to you because I've had pretty good results using it as well. The pics below show some HW97 parts that I polished by wet sanding using the above mentioned grit paper.
HW97 compression tube polished.
The last four pics kind of demonstrate the before, the process, the end result. In the last pic you can see the reflection of the spring which is sitting on the table out of view. It has a mirror finish from the wet sanding.
Hope this help you out....TR
HW97 compression tube polished.
The last four pics kind of demonstrate the before, the process, the end result. In the last pic you can see the reflection of the spring which is sitting on the table out of view. It has a mirror finish from the wet sanding.
Hope this help you out....TR
Upvote 0
My polishing arbors. Soft Muslin buffs. White diamond compound. Change buff polished with with green rouge compound.
Upvote 0