Make your own mini polishing tool: the Toothpolisher

[Coelacanth]

As some of you know, I'm a big proponent of polishing aluminum; it just looks so nice when it's done right, but it is time-consuming and needs a lot of elbow-grease to do it properly, so we sometimes cut corners and end up with less favorable results. It doesn't help that many of the parts we'd like to polish are small, complex shapes and are difficult to polish, even by hand. My Dremel toolkit came with these little polish pads, about the diameter of a dime, but they all needed to be screwed onto the shaft in the middle...so the screw-head prevents you from using it flat-on; it's only useful to polish using the pad's edges rather than the flat.

The "toothpolisher" is something I invented and finally had an opportunity to test, and can confirm it works quite well. It lets you polish with the large flat surface, not just the edge. Instead of throwing away your rechargeable toothbrush heads when they wear out, simply chop off the bristles with an X-Acto knife. I went a step further and melted off the bristle stubs with a cigarette lighter. Then, use some 5-minute epoxy to glue the polish pad onto the toothbrush head. Make a whole bunch!

Here is an example showing the results; I received this adjustable billet fuel pressure regulator from a fellow forum member on http://www.turbobuick.com. Needless-to-say it looks very dull and tired; lots of surface corrosion & minor scuffs & scratches.

Disassembled components:

I used 400-grit sandpaper to clean up most of the aluminum surfaces, and 0000 fine steel wool to remove a little surface rust from the spring & steel spring cups:

[Coelacanth]

I continued on wet-sanding with 800-grit, then 1000-grit (I ran out of 600-grit sandpaper...d'oh). The goal is to get a nice, consistent satin finish in the aluminum. But, it's the final polishing stage that gets you that deep, glossy finish...and here's the tool that helps you do that job much easier than when done by hand, or with large, clunky drill-bit polishers that might actually do more harm than good on small items like RC car parts & wheels...or this fuel pressure regulator. What I like about the toothpolisher is that it polishes relatively slowly compared to a rotary tool or drill, which gives you more control over the polishing. One issue however is that, depending on the life-cycle of the toothbrush rechargeable battery, it doesn't polish for a very long time before needing a recharge.

The left half of the regulator shows how it looks with the wet-sanding up to 1000-grit; the right half is after I "toothpolished" it:

Here's a pic of the assembled, finished resto:

And because we all love "before/after" pics:

And last important tip: Don't forget to change brush heads before brushing your teeth.

[Halgar]

I can just hear your wife calling out now, "HONEY?!?!!? Why does the toothbrush taste funny?!?!?"

[Coelacanth]

Or if I forget, the girlfriend asks, "Why are your teeth black?"

[slotcarrod]

Great idea!