POLISHING ALLOY WITHHIN AN INCH OF ITS LIFE - WHY?

[baldbmxer]

Theres alot of polished alloy parts around these days, parts like Tuff/Pro Neck stems and Redline Chainwheels that have been polished within an inch of their lives!. Parts such as these didnt come with this finish BITD - well not as I remember anyway.

Alloy stems with a professional polished finsh came in the form of ESP, Pro Fit, and ProIII and later Crupi, JP, and GT (and maybe a few more here and there.

People seem to be polishing stuff all the time now, every week there is a polished Tuff/Pro neck stem for sale with prices ranging from £70 - to the rediculous £130!! ffs, for something that in my eyes is far from original. A Skyway TA in anything but white or chrome wouldnt sell for as much would it?

And dont get me started on highly polished PK Rippers!!!!!! 

Polishing takes away. In the case of a Tuff/Pro Neck stem it rounds the near square corners off, and with a Ripper frame it kills the welds. I know that alot  depends on how much attention the polisher is prepared to take but in both cases it takes away the character of the item that made them what they are BITD.

Yes I am a purist and like my OS bike parts the way they were meant to be BITD, even if that colour was pink or lavendar! again not my bag baby!! - I didnt like that movement in the history of BMX 

What do you guys think? Remember, its not war or anything just old bike bits, and an old fart with an opionion on a cold Saturday morning. 

[dwain dibbly]

i have to agree about the ripper frame. i love to see a ballburnished frame
but it just looks wrong polished
parts however i have a different opinion.
i love to see a polished stem or chain ring.
and i don't think its a new thing i remember as i kid
sitting in my bedroom with a tube of autosol that id nicked
out of my dads toolbox and tried to polish my sr stem with
limited results
also remember other kids stripping paint from frames,polishing parts,
stickering their frames as different bikes, swapping parts.
bmx was an individual sport

its not untill now i have learnt to appreciate a bike in its original spec
as a kid anything goes.

AND WE ALL LOVE A BIT OF BLING

[Swivel]

Good points here. I think it depends on what type of look you're going for... if you want to keep it original then you shouldn't polish it but if you fancy something bling and a bit custom (i've got 2 custom builds already) then polishing is good. I do think the tuf neck stems do look sexy when polished. I know if that type of effect was available BITD I would have definately gone for it

[Rombloke]

john...dont give it all that....you love a good polish!!

Dave

[baldbmxer]

john...dont give it all that....you love a good polish!!

Dave

We all enjoy a good polish     but here is a time and a place for polishing up here at JJ's 

[harris]

im with you on all that jj ,if its bashed up and really passed it then maybe polish
but if just nicks and scratches a good clean and scrub then leave it alone.
if its not good enough for your show bike then sell it and wait for a minter.
i buy bikes so others dont restore them well some still do but its all for the originality.

[mileyboy]

how's it done then?-do these guys have polishing wheels-is it a dremmel job-just curious?

[MartyC]

I remember bitd me and my mates would strip and polish everything!  Many a Saturday morning spent stripping stems, brake levers, brakes, pedals, rims, hubs and spending ours with Autosol, elbow grease and a polishing wheel polishing them.  They may not have come standard like it but a hell of a lot of us used to do it.

I remember the first time we used caustic soda, our eyes streaming and nearly choking as well as destroying a tech 3 lever  .   Warren King's dad went mad when he first found out what we were doing in his garage with no protection and no ventilation  .  Garage door open, marigolds on, adult supervision and a polishing wheel afterwoods and we had blinging brakes like wou wouldn't believe - way better looking than the ano silver ones    We even used to take parts into school to use the tech rooms there at lunchtime to polish stuff.  I also made a couple of "power disks" from alloy but although they polished up really well they were wank as the alloy was not up to job and they would twist, the crank would muller the fixing hole and the chainrings would stretch the mounting holes.

[MartyC]

john...dont give it all that....you love a good polish!!

Dave

Ahh, a good polish, one like this...



Or like this...



 

[dwain dibbly]

how's it done then?-do these guys have polishing wheels-is it a dremmel job-just curious?

im just in the middle of a "how to polish alloy" at the moment.
im doing a pair of 24" ukai's and and hubs. it will go through all the steps
and tools needed.
i should have finished by the end of the weekend

[ron burgundy]

I don't like this over buffed stuff, I think it looks tacky... think coin rings and big fook off hula hoop ear rings...

Some one post a thread on how to make alloy look new... as in not shite

[RATTY]

In defence of the polishing, bitd a lot of us walthamstow boys (and loads of others) went through a stage of removing all the stickers off the frames and removing all the annodizing and polishing any alloy parts with autosalvol or something similar. Cav Strutt started this from memory and was a protest at the factory teams, he said the stickers were advertising them (dig at mongoose if i recall). The polish instead of colour phase lasted until I retired in 1983.
We spent hours removing the anno and polishing with the wheels still built. So although polished parts were not factory standard, they certainly had a part in the early history of bmx. 

[OrgasmDonor]

i had a squared tuf-neck BITD that i took to school n polished up on a big fook off industrial thing and I, and every ones else, loved it, but now i have to agree i much prefer an original finish, ive put a tuf-neck on my ghp which was faded as fook so i stripped it and thats it, it would easily buff up perfect and be a minter but then the look has gone, i could have polished a bit to make it look loved but i just left it as is "original". however i do enjoy buffin up midschool alloy but that is deffo a case of polishin a turd in oldschool eyes 

[Jt]

no offence to anyone, as all points are valid, but my opinion is i didnt realise there were any rules

i like a good custom build, more so than just re-doing something from back in the day...

anyone can look at a picture and replicate....

dont get me wrong, history has its place, but if someone wants to polish something then cool, crack on...

jmho

Jt

[Bigplinky]

Must admit Johnny in the main I agree with you don't machine polish as it removes the original machining marks which IMHO take the character of the part away. However if something is so knocked and scratched to be any good other than really heavy duty polishing then why not.

I think it's good when people advertise for colour swaps or exchange good parts for bad so that original finishes can be preserved on the good parts or good anno is not stripped just because it don't fit with the colour scheme you have at the moment.

If anno is scratched but not to many dings on the part then I think the Donors approach is the best strip the anno (with oven pride) and then just a light polish with autosol

Their are only a limited number of original finishes left in the world and if they can be saved they should be

But I always found Rippers blinged only using Autosol

guess I'm just a sad old git like JJ then 

[MartyC]

I think it's good when people advertise for colour swaps or exchange good parts for bad so that original finishes can be preserved on the good parts or good anno is not stripped just because it don't fit with the colour scheme you have at the moment.

If anno is scratched but not to many dings on the part then I think the Donors approach is the best strip the anno (with oven pride) and then just a light polish with autosol

Their are only a limited number of original finishes left in the world and if they can be saved they should be

I think that restoration is definitely the way to go, faded colour can be restored on most parts by have the anodising re-done; Custom Colours can now anodise things like Suntour MS1100 stems with the steel shaft still attached.  This gives heaps of options for battered stuff to be brought back to it's former glory and maintain the original "intended" finish and maybe a different colour that's hard to get e.g. gold.  I still like the bling polished look but there are options to keep or restore original finishes at a price.

TBH I also feel the same way about powder coating chrome frames, but fully understand the cost implications of rechroming; but there you go  .

[Steve P]

I remember stripping the anno/paint from loads of my parts BITD too ... it was the quickest and cheapest way to change the look of my bike

Today, it's different for me. I don't like parts that have been defaced with over enthusiastic polishing ... detail is very important. If it's in good condition I prefer to leave things original but not everything looks good with a quick clean

Here's some parts I've bought in the past ... these needed some serious resto work without going OTT

BEFORE



AFTER



BEFORE



AFTER



BEFORE



AFTER



Steve