"polishing your keg" is more than a clever euphemism

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It depends entirely on your technique. I'm Bobby M could knock out several, while I used almost 3/4 in my debacle while I learned how to do it properly. Then again I spent hours going over my first one time and time again only to discover that with a little elbow grease it's far more effective.

Now that I understand the technique I'm sure I could do 2, possibly 3+.

Realistically, 2 would probably be a good guess.
 
So I have read through the thread several times, watched Bobby's videos (and read his article) and purchased everything I need to polish my kegs. Except for one thing.

Where the hell are the finishing pads?!? Got the grinder, medium and fine pads, cutting wheel, polishing compound. But where are the finishing pads?!
Maybe Tennessee is woefully inept at meeting my needs for mirror shined keggles, but this is frustrating.

To be clear... I have shipped at Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Northern Tool, Napa Auto Parts, WalMart... And the online options for these stores as well. The closest I have come is a pad that fits on a bench grinder, but it maxes at 7500 RPM.

Would that pad work on a cordless drill set at highest speed? Any other suggestions of where I can look for the right pads for my Hitachi Angle Grinder?

I am hoping to polish them up on Saturday and order parts from Bobby to finish.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Scroll up 4 posts.

You know what... I read your post, and tried to browse the Farm and Fleet website... but didn't actually think about putting in the friggin part # you had listed.

I'd like to blame my dear friend alcohol... but she wasn't even involved with this ridiculous oversight. :drunk:

edit: Well crap. Looks like Farm and Fleet is a "northern store" and I would have to get the parts shipped to Tennessee...
 
Yea good luck finding the parts anywhere locally. I had to order everything as well. I'm in GA and I checked Harbor Freight, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace with no luck. Anyways, I will say they do arrive quickly, but yea you'll probably have to ship them.
 
Yea good luck finding the parts anywhere locally. I had to order everything as well. I'm in GA and I checked Harbor Freight, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace with no luck. Anyways, I will say they do arrive quickly, but yea you'll probably have to ship them.

I guess I better bake some damn cookies for the FedEx man then... :cross:
 
Can someone that has been successful please post a video of the actual process demonstrating how to use each of the pads and what compounds worked. If someone has already posted a video can someone post a link. Please
 
So my question, which I think I know the answer too, is should I go ahead and have my holes and couplers welded in before I take on this project. My actual plan as of right now was to run the fine pads thru this week. Since I have to order polishing pads/compounds I was gonna send my keg over to my Father in law shop to drill holes and weld couplers in. Then when I get it back I will be ready to polish. Good idea? Bad idea?
 
If it were me, and I wanted them shiny, I would polish first, tape over the areas you plan to add couplings, etc., lay out hole locations, drill through tape, ( tape will protect the work areas already polished), remove the tape, weld in the couplings.

If you do it after welding, then you have all the protrusions, ( couplings), to polish and buff around, which may make a noticeable effect, in your patterns produced when working from coarser to finer grits.
 
Does anyone roughly know the grit equivalent of those Gator pads? I am using a random orbital sander since I already had one handy and was wondering to what grit I should go to before buffing...
 
*Blows dust off of thread*

Lots of reading going on.. I'm slowly building my single tier keggles! :ban: So many questions but im starting here polishing the kegs that took me 6 years to find legally.

Anyways.. I've polished my first keg with med then fine pads. Easily noticed that med pad I needed 1 and had to start a second pad as it ate it away.. I then moved on to a fine pad. A single fine pad was able to bring the swirly shine out. I then hoped I could hook my buffer wheel up to polish it to no avail.

Seems I need to pick up a few polishing gator pads from blains farm and fleet.. My question is I need to know how many I need to order! They're in 2 packs.. and I noticed then fine pad lasted a whole keg as opposed to the med pad.. Will I get 2 kegs polished with a single pack or should i order 3? I'm debating whether to polish my mash tun keg since I'll most likely be wrapping it to keep warm. So possibly how many gator polishing pads would i need to do 3 keggles?
 
Order more than you think you'll need, that way when you get burned out and nasty, dirty, grimy from polishing, you'll have stock to start again, with no excuses for not finishing!

Seriously, only you know your polishing style and method........Someone who does it for a living, and knows all the tips and tricks, could probably call it on the nose!


:mug:
 
Besides, you'll find all kinds of things to polish afterwards. More is better.


very true went ahead and order plenty to get the job done and then some since they're not locally available. Wish I would have noticed this idea before i polished my cornys on my stationary buffer. That was a workout to say the least..
 
Forgive me if it has already been addressed, I didn't read all 66 pages of this thread. I'm wondering if anyone had problems getting the backing plate onto your grinder spindle? The fit is so tight on mine I can't get the backing plate down to get the nut even close to the threads. What am I doing wrong?
 
Forgive me if it has already been addressed, I didn't read all 66 pages of this thread. I'm wondering if anyone had problems getting the backing plate onto your grinder spindle? The fit is so tight on mine I can't get the backing plate down to get the nut even close to the threads. What am I doing wrong?

the backing pad sucks. only way i could get it to work on my Dewalt was to use another backing pad from 3m

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BQP0FI/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've made progress with the fine pad. How do you know when it's time to progress?

IMG_20160411_090906.jpg
 
Sorry to keep hashing this thread up, but I am working on polishing a couple kegs and I am burning through polishing pads like no one's business. I am three stepping: Med, Fine, Polish.

I thought it was because I was using the new pads (by new I mean not gator grip) that lowes carries. I went through 4 3packs to get relatively poor results from on one 7.75 gal keg. So I ordered gator grip polishing pads. I got my technique down ( use lots of compound ) and got a true mirror shine on a section about 12" long by 3" high. This section cost me 5 pads. When the last one "popped" if I had not been wearing pretty heavy gloves it would have wrecked my hand. So by my calculations I will need 20ish pads per keg?

I am using the backing pad. My angle grinder is 11,000rpms the pads are rated 13,300rpms if I am remembering correctly. I have tried both bearing down as Bobby mentions and feathering a bit more. I got better results not bearing down.

Any advice anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I have already spent a good bit of time and money on them and would really like to see it through but it is a bit maddening at this point.
 
Sorry to keep hashing this thread up, but I am working on polishing a couple kegs and I am burning through polishing pads like no one's business. I am three stepping: Med, Fine, Polish.

I thought it was because I was using the new pads (by new I mean not gator grip) that lowes carries. I went through 4 3packs to get relatively poor results from on one 7.75 gal keg. So I ordered gator grip polishing pads. I got my technique down ( use lots of compound ) and got a true mirror shine on a section about 12" long by 3" high. This section cost me 5 pads. When the last one "popped" if I had not been wearing pretty heavy gloves it would have wrecked my hand. So by my calculations I will need 20ish pads per keg?

I am using the backing pad. My angle grinder is 11,000rpms the pads are rated 13,300rpms if I am remembering correctly. I have tried both bearing down as Bobby mentions and feathering a bit more. I got better results not bearing down.

Any advice anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I have already spent a good bit of time and money on them and would really like to see it through but it is a bit maddening at this point.

Not too sure if you have finished or not but I just did this last night (picked up 1/4 lb sticks of green and grey from Harbor Freight) .. what I had done was use only fine pads and polishing pads (got two uses out of these as they are reversible.. kinda) but I would apply my compound heavily and work around in a large area.

For the sixtel I did the top then bottom and both sections of the middle separately and then all together with fine before moving on.

All very, very heavy just to get grey all purpose compound on the metal with no focus on blending, then I concentrated on trouble spots with extreme pressure and more compound. After I was satisfied with the level of scratching left with less compound I rounded it off blending and feathering my touch with a new pad from top to bottom all the way around the keg to get it more uniform.

What I noticed is that two passes over each area is sufficient enough finishing if keg is not heavily scratched to produce a nice finish.. used 1 1/2 fine pads for the sixtel. One to heavily apply compound and a fresh one to remove (hence my half) also seemed to last a bit longer this way.

Then switched to polish with green compound working from top to bottom and then all over once again. Using an used pad to broadly apply compound and pressure and a fresh side to take compound off and round the finish.

I'm not saying that these are the best methods ... just I got results from doing this and I'll be doing another 1/4 leg tonight (pictured right)

View attachment 1475165567111.jpg
 
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