Polishing acrylic

Anyone have a good meathod of polishing out a few scratches from an acrylic tank prior to filling it with water? I asume there should be a way to buff it out with some type of compound and buffer, however i dont want to use anything that will leave a harmful residue.

 

I have used Novus polish with great results and I know others that have used the Mothers or Meguires headlight lense polish.

 

You must use a wet sanding paper, like what is used on a clearcoated car. Depending on the size and depth you would start with a 600 grit and then using 800-1000-1500-2000-3000 etc. Novus is just a polish...not much else and should only be used when all the buffing is finished.

Caveat: if you haven't processed acrylic before then I would stay away from attempting this repair. You might end up with more noticeable damage than with a simple scratch. Good luck.

 

Novus has 3 stages to polish your acrylic. Stage 3 is abrasive. If your scratches are deep you will need wet/sandpaper to get those out first, then use the Novus to highly polish it.

 

I have to say I disagree. I never "processed" acrylic before, but I took the time to sand my tank with wet-dri paper and then all 3 stages of Novus polish and my tank came out great.

 

I agree. I've done it myself. Looked brand new.

 

I've used "crystal bond" which is a very fine type of wet polishing "paper". You don't need to start any coarser than 1500 grit in most cases. What REALLY helps is to polish in one direction (perpendicular to the scratch) until it's gone, then when you switch grits, polish at a 90* angle to the previous grit. This way you can tell when the previous scratches are polished out. I finished off with Novus using an electric automobile buffer in a circular motion. Be sure to use plenty of water.

I used to do a lot of microsectioning in a lab I used to run, and I had to polish microchips down to 0.03 micron slurry, and the above method works best.