Repair & Polish Stainless Steel The Right Way Learn In 10 Minutes

how to restore a wheel cover take  them from this to this let's get at it so a long time ago in a land far away not really  but in the land here we used to have what we call   wheel covers or what most of us call hubcaps  and they covered up the rims on your car they   virtually don't exist now but if you have a  classic car and you want to restore it and you   want it to look really nice what you have is you  have these wheel covers that are like this they're   all dented they're scraped they're all bent up  and you want them to look like this nice and new   so I'm going to show you how to do that in several  steps so this is the hubcap as we start out we've   got all kinds of dents and dings and everything  here and then as I hammer it out and then sand it   file it and pick and file all these dents out this  is what we end up with I'm down to a 600 grit here   and I'm Gonna Be Ready to polish this here is my  hubcap when it's complete and I mean you'll still   see some minor imperfections in it but once it's  on the car overall it's gonna look pretty darn   good so as far as repairing these wheel covers  I've got a small trim Hammer I have a few punches   I've got body Hammer I've got a spoon that I can  use as a dolly and I have an anvil type Dolly   here now I've got some 180 grit sandpaper and  then from 180 I'm gonna go down to 320 and then   from 320 to 400 and 400 to 600 but I'll walk  you through that whole process so I'm gonna   feel this until I find where I want to start  here and it looks like like a high spot here so I'm just gonna start  tapping it then I'm gonna take my 180 and I'm gonna sand this area and when I sand this  area it's going to show me my high spot and then and then I'm going to sand that  high spot a little bit more   and then you'll see I can  still feel it right there kind of does two things it shows you  where your high spot is and it gets rid of any marring that the hammer does and I'm going to do this to every single Ding  and Dent on here and also I'm going to use   it to sand the scratches out of the edges and  I'm gonna walk my way all the way around this   hubcap until I have it all tinned out and all  sanded with 180 and then we'll go from there on the actual picking and filing of the dents  out of the actual material though whether it be   stainless aluminum or uh steel but if you check  out one of my other videos I'll put some cards up   there I have videos for uh repairing and polishing  stainless steel I have videos on uh polishing   metal aluminum and such and I have a video also  for um how to repair metal panels without using   any body filler now these principles are exactly  the same principles that I use to repair the metal   on the hubcaps with the exception of the fact  that I go to some finer sandpapers because I'm   going to polish these uh polishes and bring it up  to a shine rather than put some paint materials   over the top of it so be sure to check out those  videos okay so now I have my hubcap is all tinned   out I chased out all my dents and picked and file  oil and sanded all my areas and this whole thing   has been seen 180 grit sandpaper I'm going to sand  the whole thing with 320 followed by 400 followed   by 600 and then I will be ready to polish it so  now we're going to take this and we're going to   run this on the buffing wheel and we're going to  bring this up to a shine this is going to be done   in several stages so what we're going to do is  we're going to use our buffer here we're going   to use this Sissel wheel which is kind of almost  like a rope-like material and we're going to use   uh black Emery here we're going to run that  on the wheel and we're going to polish this foreign as you can see the shine is starting to  come up it's going to take some time I'm   working my way around I'm about halfway  around I'll show you where I'm going   so just kind of running this on here I'm still  using the same materials the same Sissel wheel and   the uh the black emmering and as I just keep going  it just starts to shine come over here like this   shine this baby up and uh it starts to really look  good so here's my wheel cover now that I've run   the black Emery on the Sissel wheel now I'm going  to go to a white Emery which looks like this and   this is what it is right here and I'm going to  use it on this this is called a spiral sewn it's   a little bit stiffer I mean a little bit softer  rather than the Sissel wheel that I have here   so I'm going to take and I'm going to run my rake  over this to get it clean and then we're going to   do the same process with this white Rouge and this  uh this shine is going to come up considerably foreign starting to bring it up a little bit higher the  shine with this white Rouge and I'll continue   to do the entire wheel cover and we'll show  you what we got after that okay so there's   our wheel cover after the second part of this  process and now I've taken off my spiral Stone   and I put on this loose flannel cloth buffing pad  here and I'm going to use this other white Rouge   that I have that's going to put even more of a  shine on it than this and that after that then   a little hand polishing and we shall be done okay  so generally I start right where my valve stem is   that way there it's really easy for me to remember  where I've started and stopped same same process so now you can really see that shine coming  up even more so right here it gives it   virtually a chrome effect okay so here we are  after the final polishing with the buffing wheel   and uh this is what our hubcap looks like wipe  this excess Material off of here there she is   so now I'll just hand polish this a little bit  and we'll assemble it okay so now I have this   product called autosol it's just a little tube of  this paste that we use to polish this metal and   I'll just go along here like this and uh I'll hand  polish all the nooks and crannies it's almost like   you know after you buff a vehicle you glaze it or  you wax it whatever is appropriate at the time and   that's basically what this is as I do this you  can see it really brings up the shine flexed on   wax off keep turning my Rag and then that's what  it looks like this is the kind of stuff we started   with that's the kind of stuff we finish with okay  so here we go here's our hubcap all complete and   uh here's the other one that I just did yesterday  and uh now I've got two more I've got to do you   can see these here are all dented and really  messed up and you just kind of keep at it all right so there you have it folks we go  from this damage beat up wheel cover to a   nice clean shiny wheel cover that everybody's  gonna think is brand new uh I hope this video   helps you out if you have any questions uh  please ask me down in the comments below I   will put links in the comments below for all of  the tools and all of the compounds the buffing   wheel all that stuff everything you need to do  this job there'll be links below please use my   links it helps me I make a couple of bucks but  these videos take an extremely lot of work and   a lot of time to do I like doing them and I like  helping people out but just give me a little bit   of love back you know what I mean so uh thank  you for tuning in and good luck on your project

Channel: Troy Kane Vtwins to v8s

Views: 11,649

Keywords: repairing stainless steel, stainless steel, stainless, steel, dent removal, repair, repair stainless steel, stainless steel scratches, scratched stainless steel, polishing stainless steel, stainless steel polishing, stainless steel polish, buffing stainless steel, metal polishing, how to polish steel, mirror finish stainless steel, polishing, mirror polished stainless steel, mirror polish stainless steel, polish stainless steel, how to polish metal

Id: J5vz0aLidCs

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022