Resurfacing Brushed Stainless

What exactly are we talking about refinishing? It'll be pretty difficult to remove scratches and restore the original finish over a large area without the proper equipment. If your piece has flat surfaces and is not too unwieldy, and depending on how closely you want the repair to match, the easiest thing might be to bring it to a shop that fabricates commercial kitchen equipment. They'll have a couple ways to produce a uniform brushed finish, depending on the shape and size of the workpiece.

If you're not too fussy, try the scotch-brite. For more scratch-removing power, and more potential to make things worse rather than better, a fine flap wheel.

Where would one find a list of such shops?

What is the name of the equipment such shops use to brush stainless?

This is how it's done. Not easily reproducible on a small scale.

Here are two fabricators I use that do this sort of work.

A stroke sander or a Timesaver would probably be the top choices, depending on the size and shape of the piece. Google will find you pictures if you're curious.

Scotchbrite of the right "grit" does the job.

A good friend of mine is a stainless fabricator and he "hand brushes" all the welds to match the original sheets with scotchbrite. He grinds and sands the weld to get smooth - down to 600 or 1000 grit wetsand, then strokes with scotchbrite.

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

One of the things that is difficult when doing this by hand is getting a nice straight brush pattern. You can't scrub back & forth, you have to always go in one direction. Even the act of pushing a Scotchbrite pad down on the work will cause little swirly scratches where the pad flexes sideways. You need to be moving the pad in the desired driection as you apply pressure. The next time I need to do this, I'm going to try one of the circular Scotchbrite pads in a rotary tool like a hand drill. I suspect you'll still need to be careful to always work in the direction you want the brush marks. I doubt you can just move the contact area around even with the drill going fairly fast without introducing swirly marks. Of course, a lot depends on how fussy you are & the application.

Doug White

Hmmm. Do they make Scotchbrite drums?

Pete Keillor

How about Scotchbrite flap wheels?

Enjoy, DoN.

Plugging a competitor?

Wee

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