My keggle polishing project

I am in the process of increasing my production from 5 gallons to 10. I have acquired some decommissioned kegs from a local keg management company and am now starting to clean and polish them. I decided to go the gator grit route for sanding since it seems to be the most popular. Thanks Bobby M. for the awesome information on your site. For the final polishing I went with a sisal wheel on my dewalt buffer because I could not find the gator grit polishing pad locally. I bought the gator grit pads and compound at lowes. The sisal wheel came from harbor freight tools. I wished I went there first. They had there own version of gator grit pads for a 4 1/2" grinder. Anyways, here is a picture of where I am at right now.
The lower portion of the keg has been hit with the gator grit fine pad and the upper portion has been buffed with #2 compound and the sisal pad. Here is the buffer setup.
The pad on the buffer was made for a bench grinder but I was able to attach it to the buffer with a 5/8-11 nut and the washers that came with it. I


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Finished with the first keggle.


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Holy cow! That's shiny!!!!!

That looks great, my first keggle is on the way. cant wait to get it nice and bright =D


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Reminds me when I was a young fireman with a rag and can of never-dull polishing anything brass in sight.

Goolsbymd said:

Reminds me when I was a young fireman with a rag and can of never-dull polishing anything brass in sight.

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If only polishing with a rag and neverd-dull was that easy on SS. This project took about 6 hours of labor broken into 2 weeks to go from beat up old keg to polished keggle. Now I am working on the next on. It is in better condition than this one was but the manufacturer never sanded the keg from production so it has a lot of marks on the surface that needs to be sanded down. Seems like this one is going to take longer to get to the mirror finish. Although I think the finish will be much better since this one doesn't have any deep gouges in it.

Heres my before and after with about 4 hours of work. Not a mirror but it looks much cleaner haha


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Those kegs are making me nostalgic for my old drinking grounds having lived in locations where Abita and Uinta were the local breweries.

How long did this take for either of you? I got mine about half shiny then ran out of patience.

I just got a keggle set and picked up some polishing stuff. I'm not sure how far I'll take it. I'm wanting to start with buffing out some small speckles of rust and cleaning them up.

Its easy to get carried away with it, the rust on mine wasnt to bad to get off, i just sanded it all down with 180 grit, gave it a nice brushed steel look, i almost stopped with that but like i said, you'll get carried away with it rather easily


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I ran a test spot with a 4.5in disc power sander and the coarse gator grit pad and the rust seemed to come off with little effort. Lowes didn't have the right polishing compound or the polishing pads so I may need to wait before getting carried away.

The first one took about 4-6 hours broken up over the coarse of a couple weekends. I was starting off going for that brushed look at first but after hitting it with the polish I couldn't stop once I saw that mirror shine come through. It is definitely labor intensive. For my second keggle I built a jig that the keg lies on it's side in. The I place it on some bench horses. Makes the job a lot easier.


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SavageBrewer said:

The first one took about 4-6 hours broken up over the coarse of a couple weekends. I was starting off going for that brushed look at first but after hitting it with the polish I couldn't stop once I saw that mirror shine come through. It is definitely labor intensive. For my second keggle I built a jig that the keg lies on it's side in. The I place it on some bench horses. Makes the job a lot easier.


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I guess the jig would be the key, after about 2 hours one day I had had enough and felt that was close enough. I remember seeing someone had created a keg polishing machine. I think someone could make some money in a city with a large Brewing community by building one and charging $40/keg or a filled corny per polish.

Haha brilliant, I used an old cooler for a jig, the keg laid on its side nice in it, i filled the cooler up with water to keep it from tipping and sat on a 5 gallon bucket, definitely couldn't have worked on it with out that setup


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Pics of the inside?

? Why pics of the inside?

wbarber69 said:

? Why pics of the inside?

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Never seen, is all.

Who polishes the inside that's what pbw is for

Actually, I have to correct myself. It's because for some reason I thought he was posting pictures of a stainless steel drum, not a keggle.

that polished keggle looks awesome, does it make the beer taste better?

PackerfaninSanDiego said:

that polished keggle looks awesome, does it make the beer taste better?

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I assume taking pride in the things that you do and own would make the beer taste better.

PackerfaninSanDiego said:

that polished keggle looks awesome, does it make the beer taste better?

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Thanks. I haven't finished the rest of the system yet so it just sits there looking pretty.


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454Casull said:

Pics of the inside?

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Yeah. Inside is just dull SS finish. I imagine it world be a royal pain to polish the inside if anyone wanted to do it.


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I think it would be good to polish the inside, maybe just in the BK so all the junk just slides right off!! I have started doing that with one of mine....its a PITA, but i think it will be worth it.

abarker8541 said:

I think it would be good to polish the inside, maybe just in the BK so all the junk just slides right off!! I have started doing that with one of mine....its a PITA, but i think it will be worth it.

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Good luck. I wish you all the best. I do not have the motivation to polish the inside of mine. A green scrubby and BKF is all the inside is getting from me. I'd like to see a pic of it when your finished. Let us know if it does help with clean up.


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Reviving an old thread because I'm currently in the process of trying to get a mirror-like finish on my keggles.

I'm finding that my angle grinder produces a lot of black and grey marks all over the keggle when I'm sanding and polishing. Does anyone know what causes this or how to avoid it? It seems that every time I make some progress, more black marks appear.