Originally Posted by
Bikedued
I have a Harbor Freight near me, and I think I will go looking for an "abrasive ball". A timely thing, this thread popping up when it did. I am just about to polish the Nervar Star crank on my Moto GR.
They'll have three grades...I use all three.
I use the coarse for buzzing off shopwear, the medium after that, and the fine for getting the initial smooth finish before starting with 600 grit wet/dry.
Originally Posted by
Scottryder
Just a quick thanks to Keith for doing an incredible job polishing these two items for me, a Suntour Superbe seat post and Nitto Chrystem for one on my Fuji Pro's. Scott
They were fun too. The Crystem with those big flats really shows off the shine.
Those were: deanodize with lye (I masked off the top of the post, the textured part and only lowered into the lye just below that), 600, 1200, 2500 Black Ice wet/dry, Mother's, final pass with Blue Magic. I would guess 1.5 hours total for the pair.
Originally Posted by
Bikedued
He did a quick pass with the abrasive ball on the GB stem he sent me a while back, and it looks factory fresh. Sorry Keith, my camera battery is dead, but I will get a pic of it on here tonight if I can.,,,,BD
Yeah, it was funny, whatever alloy that GB stem was really looked good after the pass with the green ball. There weren't the fine scratches I'm used to seeing after the
green ball. I might have been using a worn one too. In all the grades, they;re much more aggressive the first few times you use them, then they kind of soften a bit...
EDIT: I should add...when I do things like stems and hub shells I'll actually take the ball apart, remove some layers leaving 2-4 layers of the abrasive material, then space back with washers and reassemble. That makes it MUCH easier to get into and control inside hubshells and the inside part of the crook in a stem.