SonexBuilders.net

fastj22, I have the same one you posted in the link. I also have an orbital polisher as well, but can imagine it would take a whole lot more work and time to get the same job done. I would imagine it may work better for final polish, but have not tried it.

Hi all,
We have done our first pass with F9 on one stabilizer skin. For a couple hours work it looks good, like a 20+' polish job. I am polishing before riveting. How nuts should I go considering I still have to rivet and then store the tail for a while? I am using an old sears 10" grinder on low speed with a 7" wheel and the Sonex Nuvite starter kit.

That looks great Bryan! You've made a very wise choice in polishing all the pieces as you assemble. Like the idiot I am, I chose to wait until the airplane was flying before I really started in on polish; your final product will look much better as a result.

How far you polish at this point is really up to you. The more you do now, the less you'll have to do later. Even if the pieces sit around for a while it will still be less work for later. If I were to build another kit and go with a polished exterior, I would take each piece and polish through a few F9 passes as well as a few C passes before moving on. Like I said, do as much as you can stand now because when the plane is together, you aren't going to want to polish, you'll want to be in the air flying!

Keep up the great work!

Thanks Mike. Still making progress. I retired one HF pad as I suspected its tiredness was generating a lot of swirly scratches. That helped. Do you guys wash your pads and rags or just chuck them?

I take my wool pads and rags to the laundromat to wash. When dry I put the pads on the polisher and at a high speed use a table fork ( don't have a fancy tool) to fluff them up. Works for me.

onex28 wrote:I take my wool pads and rags to the laundromat to wash. When dry I put the pads on the polisher and at a high speed use a table fork ( don't have a fancy tool) to fluff them up. Works for me.

I do the same, although it's not a perfect system as I've read to not use regular laundy detergent on microfiber towels. I'm sure someone makes a detergent made for microfiber, but I haven't found it yet. What do you do?

The only caveat I've seen on washing microfiber cloth is to not use bleach or fabric softener as that reduces the quality, effectiveness and longevity of the cloth. I wash microfiber, in hot water, with the same detergent I use for cotton fabric and have noticed no difference in use.

I have been using old t shirts. Is that no good?

I have bought a package of microfiber cloths. They look like terrycloth to me. Seem to work good. I finished up with F9 tonight, onto Nuvite C. That is as far as I am going prior to assembly.

Right Bryan, I would think that microfiber would work better than an old tee shirt, at least mine.