polishing stainless bolts

As I look on line I couldn't find any posts on polishing stainless bolts. So here is how I polished mine. I went to Harbor Freight and bought a 1in by 30in belt sander to use to grind the letters off the bolts, I used a 80 grit belt at first until the head of the bolt was void of all letters and flat. Then I switched the belt out for a 120 grit and sanded the head flat and made sure all of the low spots and imperfections were gone. After that  I used 320 grit sheet paper on a flat surface to sand out the 120 scratches by hand. I know that doing it by hand is a lot more work but I found the end result looked better. there are other ways to sand the heads of bolts using a electric drill just make sure you don't over tighten the drill on the bolts and tare up the threads or to loose and spin the bolt. The problem I have with using a drill is that unless you a really careful it will leave circles in the head of the bolt. After the 320 grit I used 400, then 600 and finally 1200 to finish the sanding process. For polishing I first used 3M rubbing compound Perfect-it on a clean piece of paper and used one drop and rubbed it vigorously rotating the bolt a quarter turn periodically. After polishing with the Perfect-it I used a clean micro fiber rag to lightly buff the bolt to a shine. A few of the bolts I had to work back and forth on different grits of paper to work out small scratches but in the end I thought they turned out great!

 

Back to dust

So I had a little time this week so I got three coats of feather fill on the rear end and a few other parts. Then I spent five hours sanding on the rear housing. At this point I think I might have gone a little crazy. To add to the crazy I sanded and buffed one of the stainless bolts for the rear housing cover, and now it looks like I will be pulling the bolts off the motor and doing them too. But it will look good when it is done. I coated the backing plates for the brakes and got them smoothed off. I used all of my epoxy primer so it is time for another gallon hope fully this is the last I will have to buy of the epoxy. All I need now is some more time so I can get the axles done and get them back under the truck. I have passed my time goal so I am a little sad but I figured I was wishing big. So new goal is to have the axles under it by January and hopefully the motor and trans in by march. Cross my fingers and hope.