Removing scratches on glass

Eastwood has a couple of different kits:

I can testify that those kits work "slicker than snot on a brass doorknob".

I bought one a few years ago when son picked up a ten year old Honda Civic with a few arc shaped scratches on the windshield that looked like someone had run the wipers with a broken on missing blade.

It took quite a while to polish those scratches out, but the results were excellent.

Jeff - Windshields are to look through, not at.

Good information Jeff. Thanx!

This begs the question of how to remove (polish out) scratches in "plexiglass", such as those on the eye guards of my bench grinder.

I can testify that those kits work "slicker than snot on a brass doorknob".

I bought one a few years ago when son picked up a ten year old Honda Civic with a few arc shaped scratches on the windshield that looked like someone had run the wipers with a broken on missing blade.

It took quite a while to polish those scratches out, but the results were excellent.

Jeff - Windshields are to look through, not at.

lass", such as those on the

Jet fighter canopy polish. Got a couple of cans at the surplus store. Similar stuff is available from plastics suppliers, TAP Plastics was my main supplier when I was out in CA. Some of the polishes used by body shops will work, too, car paint these days is basically a hard plastic.

Stan

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Well ... I have several Snap-On torque wrenches with "memory" needles mounted into the "crystals" with a knob for resetting them. They *all* had a lot of scratches clouding up the crystals.

I remembered something which I read a long time ago, and popped the crystals off for easy access and cleaning, then took an electric toothbrush with one of the old heads which I saved for such uses, wet it, put on some toothpaste, and attacked the surface of the crystals.

It did a great job on everything except for a couple of especially deep gouges on one of them.

So -- polish with toothpaste, then rinse, dry, and reassemble.

I had not tried this before, because my usual practice is to make new crystals from Lexan sheet, but getting the needles out of the old crystal and into a replacement looked like a real pain, so I opted to try the toothpaste trick first.

Enjoy, DoN.

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:28:47 -0400, the infamous "Steve W." scrawled the following:

I checked out the MSDS on Eastman's Rhodite; it's the same Cerium used in Caswell's product for only twice Caswell's price.

Kudos to Caswell!

-- Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. -- Johann K. Lavater

Not of direct relevance for actually removing the scratches, but I saw a terrific little trick applied by a water meter reader a while back: he poured water on the meter. The refractive index of the water was close enough to that of the plastic that the scratches just vanished. They carry Coke bottles with a hole punched in the cap with a nail for just this purpose.

Not a real fix, of course, but if you just have to see through it at the moment...

such as those on the

Follow the link for the companion "cleaner" product. These products are what the Air Force guys used on jet fighter canopies at Tyndall AFB back in the '70's.

That said, plex is not expensive. I'd just replace them.

On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:16:32 -0500, the infamous Don Foreman scrawled the following:

"plexiglass", such as those on the

Ditto. Plexi tends to yellow and get a bit brittle over time, too. Pricewise, the cost will be lower for new plexi.

-- Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. -- Johann K. Lavater

8 oz for half the price of 16 oz... such a deal. Kudos to Caswell's marketing department...Caswell's kit includes a cheaper 2" felt bob, too.

Optical pitch lap, and a slurry of cerium oxide.

Steve R.

Automotive cut wax.

Steve R.