polishing , buffing how do u do it

[therock]

keep seeing stems,chain ring and other things really highly polished . how the hell do they get them so bright. there s a hutch stem on the US ebay that is so bright the guy taking the picture is perfectly visible in the mirror like reflection from the picture of the stem. do they just use a tube of autosol and a dam gud scrubbing or can you buy some sort of bench polishing wheels of some sort . some one must no iv seen the finishes some of you guys get . cheers martyn

[stidds]

Martyn

I polish lots of parts to a mirror finish.  It takes more than a tube of autosol to do it properly.

I now use a bench grinder to do the work but when I started out polishing I bought a kit with a drill attachment exactly like this ebay auction http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/12-pc-Polishing-Kit-for-Brass-Copper-Iron-Steel-Alloy_W0QQitemZ180109010983QQcategoryZ25644QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

What you do is use the course mop on the drill with the appropriate compound, this does the initial polishing.  You then use the medium mop and compound and finally the fine mop and compound.  After using all of the mops then the item should have a mirror finish.

It takes a while to do it properly, for instance a set of crank arms take about an hour to do well.

[Coastvl]

I don't want to send people to another site, but if your a member on the "V" you should read this. Very helpful.
http://www.vintagebmx.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=005471