ContinuousWave   Whaler   Moderated Discussion Areas   ContinuousWave: Whaler Repairs/Mods   Marinium impossible    search | FAQ | profile | register | author help

Author	Topic:   Marinium impossible
RCS	posted 07-12-2003 10:54 PM ET (US)         I'm going to the well once again. I have been trying to polish and clean up the brightwork on my 15 year old boat. It's in fair shape and the stainless polishes up nicely. the Marinium is another story. It had the appearance of dull aluminum and I did not realize it was not until I did a search on polishing metal on this site. I have tried Flitz, dremels with polishing compounds with felt pads, and stainless brushes, fine bronze wool, you name it. It still has a pretty splotchy finish, especially the rub rail caps at the stern. I pulled all of that hardware off the boat to do the work but so far it ain't working. Has anybody had similar luck with this stuff? I was also wondering why Marinium and not stainless steel? Oddly, only the springline cleats are Marinium, the others are stainless steel. Hopefully one of these days I will be able to return the favor for all the tips I've gotten on this forum! Thanks
Gep	posted 07-13-2003 12:38 AM ET (US)             RCS, I pulled all of the Marinium pieces off of my 1981 18' Outrage and I used a buffing wheel and alot of buffing compound. It worked pretty well, after a ton of hours and even more elbow grease I got them pretty shiny. Mike
alkar	posted 07-13-2003 09:28 AM ET (US)             There is a lot of information on this. See Barry's success at: http://continuouswave.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003272.html Other helpful posts can be found by searching using using "Polishing marinium" as topic.
RCS	posted 07-13-2003 05:22 PM ET (US)             Barry's photos of "before and after" are what inspired me to try to polish this stuff in the first place. He had mentioned the dremel, polishing compound, and stainless steel wire brushes (dremel accessories). Someone else had sworn by the Flitz product. Without those I would have gotten nowhere with it. I did quite a bit of searching on the topic "polishing marinium" and although I found a lot of information, none of the tricks used by other folks has worked yet. I'll keep applying elbow grease and and see if that eventually works. Thanks
RCS	posted 07-13-2003 05:29 PM ET (US)             I may have found the answer, Chuck Bennett of BW had recommended to someone to use 600 grit wet sandpaper as a first step followed by Flitz and then waxing. I will report back.
FXSTB	posted 07-13-2003 09:03 PM ET (US)             I just accomplished the task you are about to undertake. I would suggest you use 1000 grit, not 600 because 600 will leave deep scratches and 1000 did not. I then followed up with polishing compound and plastic windshield polish for motorcycles. It worked pretty darn good, but I think impossible to restore to new condition. At least mine were, because of deep scratches from previous owner :)
RCS	posted 07-13-2003 10:43 PM ET (US)             The wet sanding did it. I had some 600 and 1000 grit and used both before using the Flitz polish. No problem. Wish I had tried that to start with! As alkar had said, the information was here, just had to find it. Mine had some scratches that would not come out also but I did get about 95% of them out. The Hawes holes were in rough shape. Thanks for the help.
JaySul	posted 07-14-2003 11:10 AM ET (US)             RCS, I tackled my running lights this weekend with 3M rubbing compound, elbow grease and lots of rags. I was surprised they could look so good when before they looked like aluminum as you described. Next weekend, the bow plate gets the treatment. I think I'll try the 1000 grit and compound. Jay

Hop to: ContinuousWave: The Whaler GAM or General AreaContinuousWave: Whaler MarketplaceContinuousWave: Whaler Repairs/ModsContinuousWave: Whaler PerformanceContinuousWave: Cetacea CommentsContinuousWave: Small Boat ElectricalContinuousWave: Trips and RendezvousContinuousWave: Post-Classic WhalersMETA-Discussion