Finish polish alternatives

[Rynoth]

I just finished cleaning my plane with mineral spirits followed by hand-application of Zephyr Pro40.

This picture is my plane after the last time I polished it with Nuvite-C grade in November 2017:



And this is my plane after today (May 2020):



I think the Zephyr product does a fantastic job of restoring a 2.5 year old polish job with a lot less work. It doesn't really make it look BETTER than a full polish job, but it absolutely worked as a maintenance polish. Might have bought myself another year before breaking out the Nuvite and pads to clean up all the water spots (I'll try Zephyr with a buffer first.) It did remove fingerprint marks.

Just to re-iterate, Zephyr Pro40 did nothing to improve the shine of non-Nuvite polished parts on the plane (though it did clean them up a bit), and I don't think it replaces Nuvite (or other similar initial-cut polishes) for the original polish.

[flyingbear]

With Nuvite and a buffer about how many hours are we talking to get an airplane polished like that?
glenb

[Rynoth]

With Nuvite and a buffer about how many hours are we talking to get an airplane polished like that?
glenb

Without trying to be too pessimistic or optimistic, and depending on whether you're starting with the sheets on a flat table or from a totally unpolished but assembled airframe.... 40-60 hours? I polished most of mine as I built so it's hard to get a solid tally. The last time I re-polished (with nuvite and buffer) everything but the bottom of the wings it took about 15 hours. But the initial polish cut takes quite a bit longer. I'm sure there will be folks that have spent 100+ hours cumulatively polishing and still aren't quite satisfied.

It took me about 3-4 hours to "clean" my plane with the Zephyr Pro-40 which basically restored it to my previously polished state.