Polishing acrylic
- Thread starter ouling
- Start date
er, no... I don't know that you can polish acrylic with anything reef safe, since what you normally do involves using a compound to fill the spaces, one that I can't imagine would be suitable for your tank or fuge, but then, I'm a bit paranoid about that kind of thing. the only thing I know of is the same stuff I use to polish CD's and DVD's I also use to polish minor scrapes and scratches on the acrylic side-panels on a computer case, and it works ok sometimes, the the scratch or scuff is shallow.
Acrylic polishing works differently. Instead of using an actual polish, you use very fine sandpaper. Depending on the depth of the scratch, start at around 1000 grit and slowly work your way up to 12-15,000 grit (yes, 15 thousand). I've seen it demo'd several times and works well.
ouling, if you're looking to do an entire tank (with live reef or not), check out the Everclear company that Wolfie linked to- they have some relatively inexpensive tools for mechanical polishing and work even with a tank full of coral. Steve Shindell used this method on his 400 with good results (although paid to have it done).
- Messages
- 4,441
- Reaction score
- 1,330
Well this is a topic I'm intimately familiar with. I got my tank, stand, and hood which are all acrylic from craigslist for very little. The problem though is that the tank was scratched up like crazy. It's a little time consuming but not very hard to remove scratches from an empty tank. Just use sand paper of various grit sizes and keep working it in opposing directions with each successive grit size. I started with 600 grit and finished it with 4000 grit I think. The higher the number the more fine. I then used the novus 123 products to complete the procedure. Truth be told though... don't bother with the novus products, they're not nearly as effective as you would hope to think. In fact, even the novus 3 which is supposed to help remove deep scratches wouldn't make a dent in even the shallow scratches. It worked moderately alright for some hazed areas... but it wasn't worth the time to apply it. You just can't beat elbow grease and sandpaper.
You can get the sandpaper from autozone but I think advanced auto parts tends to have a better selection of the really fine stuff. However, I do recommend going with micromesh for removing scratches as it works REALLY well and I even use it in my reef tank on the inside of the tank. Yes it creates little microscopic shavings of acrylic that float around the tank... but I've done it on 3 occasions now and have removed scratches and abrasions from sand and rocks on the inside of the tank while it was full of life.... so far no problems and I would do it again if necessary
.
Here's a link to where I got my mesh from:
You can get the sandpaper from autozone but I think advanced auto parts tends to have a better selection of the really fine stuff. However, I do recommend going with micromesh for removing scratches as it works REALLY well and I even use it in my reef tank on the inside of the tank. Yes it creates little microscopic shavings of acrylic that float around the tank... but I've done it on 3 occasions now and have removed scratches and abrasions from sand and rocks on the inside of the tank while it was full of life.... so far no problems and I would do it again if necessary
.Here's a link to where I got my mesh from:
Neat, I wouldn't have expected you could polish acrylic without some kind of chemical or residue to fill in the blanks, but it's good to know there is a safe method to polish them... I just assumed that once you scratched it, it would nearly impossible to polish it even by mechanical (meaning sand-paper, etc.) means as even a super-fine sandpaper wold still just scratch it even further; it's good to be wrong sometimes
- Messages
- 4,441
- Reaction score
- 1,330
No you're right actually... we are just scratching the acrylic further and further. However, when you eventually get to the 4000+ grit range the scratches are so fine that you can't see them.
Well, I understand the scratches being to fine to see individually, but I would have assumed that this would produce an effect similar to etching glass, and not actually restore it to full transparency.
Similar threads
