Roy's Polishing Experience Using Rolite Products
by Roy Lashway, <rlashway@zianet.com> 5/1/2000

After a lot of research and advice from others on the VAC list and Airstream List on polish products and methods I contacted Rolite Co., 1-800-253-6466, about their polish products. If you call ask for Janet. and explain your project and she will give you good straight forward advice. I used their "Pre-Polish"which really cuts the oxidation. Next I used their Metal Polish which brings up a pretty good shine. The finally polish was with a product called AP-300 Aircraft Aluminum Polish and this really gives a bright final finish. Finally I applied a coat of Rolite Premium Car Polish and Sealant. This is wiped on thinly and hand rubbed off as it hazes dry . This is to seal the aluminum and provide protection to polished finished. I am not sure but am hoping that maybe an application of this each year or more often will keep finish up to snuff. If not probably an application of AP-300 will be necessary. For my unit I used two containers each of the pre-polish and metal polish and one can of the AP 300 on my 16ft unit. The polish cost was a bit over $200.00 although I think it is good stuff and worth it for the job it done. They will send you a sample kit of the products and you can try them out.
My 16ft, 1956 Bubble trailer had 44 years of oxidation built up on it thus the pre-polish was a must. If yours was ever polished before or not very oxidized you may be able to by-pass the pre-polish. Using the samples provided will help you decide. I completed my trailer after about 50 hours of actual polishing over about 5 weeks. My right elbow and shoulder are still in recovering. Seriously if you have a problem with tennis elbow this may not be a task you should try as a lot of strain is placed on the elbow as well as the shoulder. The polisher I used is not light weight and although well balanced it will develop/exercise some muscles.
Another persons to contact is Scott at Lake Country Mfg, 1-800-648-2833, who can provide you with polishing pads. He recommended, and I used a different pad for each different polish. The difference appeared to be the length of fiber. Shortest for the pre-polish and longest for the AP 300. I got three sets of pads (9 pads) for my 16 ft and used 7 of them. I washed out pads each day and used a "clean" set the next day. I was only able to polish about 2 hrs per day due to temperatures (need to be at least 60 degrees) so using one set of pads each day worked. If I was to do it again I would probably buy a couple more of the pads for the pre-polish and change more often as they load up with residue..
It is a pretty dirty job. I bought 3 doz 12" wash (face) cloths from WalMart to use as wiping rags and they worked well. You use them for wiping off residue and cleaning off the trailer skin. Washed them in wash machine and dried in dryer so always had plenty on hand each day. I would use about a dozen in a 2 hrs period.
Scott at Lake Country recommend a polisher, DeWalt model 849, about $170.00 (WEB Site Special) from Harbor Freight (1-800- 444-3353) A fine piece of equipment and handles very well. I wouldn't skimp on a polisher as it does all the work for you. I used the DeWalt for all three polishes and when done had very limited swirl marks. I did however have access to a Cyclo polisher and I put a second coat of AP 300 on the upper half of the trailer using the Cyclo with foam rubber pads. It did smooth out the finish a bit nicer, which, maybe, means it removed swirl marks although I can't be sure the reflections from a bright sun were swirl marks or just reflections. I suspect if I had simply applied the sealer/polish without using the cyclo machine I would have toned down these reflections. Others have found the Cyclo to be a good polishing machine but not perhaps the best for heavy oxidation removal. It is also a costly machine at nearly $300.00. The sealer tends to diminish the shine just a wee bit or better yet it kind of evens out the finished appearance. Gives it a somewhat softer look. The actual finish before applying the sealer was so bright and mirror like it was almost garish and I appreciated what the sealer did. It is still mirror bright but just a bit less harsh, if that makes any sense.

During first polish process (Rolite Pre-Polish) I washed trailer and then applied polish with a dampened cloth pad (later shifted to small house hold sponges) covering about a 2 ft sq area. Polisher speed was set to 1500 for pre-polish and at 1000 rpm for Metal Polish and AP300. I acquired rubber gloves from Home Depot to protect my hands. I worked polisher from right to left and then back. Keep polisher pad tilted upward on its upper edge (as opposed to flat) as it cuts better and allows you to control your cutting pressure. I would go over the area two or three times, watch carefully to see how cleanyou are getting the surface You don't have to apply specific pressure as the weight of the machine and the slight tilt of polish will do the job normally. A bit more pressure on scratches may be used.
You will buff up some really black "mud" which is the oxidation you are cutting off. If you keep working the pad over the area you can actually pick up a lot of this mud in the pad. After you think you have it clean then wipe off the remaining "mud" using a mineral spirits saturated cloth or (I found this more useful after I learned to pick up most of mud in the pad) Windex with Vinegar (comes in green bottle), Works great. Spray on and wipe until surface it clean and dry. This is a very messing job at this point. The "mud" really sticks to you, kind of like chimney soot. When you start the new polishing pads will start flaking off lint and this dirty stuff will get all over you, the ground etc. Using a broom just stab it to pick up from ground. This stuff will stick to shoes etc. and will track into the house and raise the devil with carpet. Your face and front part of clothing will get filthy as the pad is always throwing off a bit of mud and you are really close to the action. I got a knee length shop coat to wear which I could wash every night but coveralls would be OK. Just don't wear your Sunday best because you will never get some of these stains out. I could work about 2 hours and then my pad was full and I would change it out but you can play this by ear. Remember, you will use a different pad for each p

eolish. Pads have different fiber content and fiber length. You can observe when pad is get over loaded, particularly a problem when using pre-polish. I would from time to time turn my polisher up right and hold a steel bristled brush against the pad and run it. This combed out the packed fibers in pad and you can get a little more mileage out of them before changing.
You will spend a lot of time getting ready to polish and even more time cleaning up. When you stop for the day make sure all your surfaces are wiped clean, including the seams. I understand that if seam have mud left in them they are impossible to clean after five hours of drying time. Clean your pads. Method I was told about was to purchase a grease cutting soap concentrate from a janitorial supply house (in gal quantities) and mix up at least 3 gals in a 5 gal bucket. Put dirty polish pads in and let them soak for 30 minutes. Then use a toilet plunger and work the pads in the bucket, working up and down like a washing machine agitator. I give them each about 25 seconds of this procedure. Your pad will typically have a hole in the center where they are attached to the polisher. You can place the plunger handle thru this hole and holding the pad at top do a pretty good job of agitating. After washing the pads I would place each pad back on the polisher and holding over the top of bucket would spin dry the pads at 3500 rpm. Be careful here and keep pad as low in bucket as possible and start spinning with one or two short burst to get heavy water out. Otherwise you will throw stuff all over you and anything near buy. I hung the spun dry pads over my hot water tank in the house and by morning they were dry. I would use the steel brush and give them a quick hand brush just to fluff them up the next day. I used a couple dozen face cloths as wiping rags and used about a dozen or so each day. I would wash them at night in the auto washing machine, sometimes I'd run them thru twice when I was using the pre-polish. Then into the dryer. Worked great except you have to wipe out the inside of the washing machine as a residue is left and will stain other clothing. Didn't see any problem with the dryer.

l would try each day to completely finish an area using all three polish compounds. I might do six or eight sq ft before before changing to the next polish,( some time less in really scratched areas when spent time working out/on polishing out scratches). I would then shift to the next polish but I wanted each days work to be fully polished. In a two hour period that is about all I could get done before I ran out of gas or daylight. (I would polish only when temp. was 60 degrees or above which meant I could not get going until about 2-3PM and it was dark by 6PM - this was in March and I live in the southwest but at a 4000 ft altitude so had to wait for temperature to rise).

The application of the second metal polish and the AP300 followed the same routine but these coats work a bit faster and are a lot cleaner as much less oxidation is coming off. Still messy but only half as bad. You will start getting a good shine after the second product is used and the AP 300 will really touch it off. However, as you polish pay close attention to the surface. You will become familiar with quality of finish you need and you need to polish a lot so as to not leave "swirls", pad directional marks caused by polish pads. If polished correctly/sufficiently you will have little or no swirl marks. Please understand this is very tedious and realative slow process. You will need to polish and repolish. Often adding more polish to an area as all surface areas may have different degree of oxidation, scratches, and pit marks. You will find a lot of scratches under the oxidation and the best time to work these out is in the pre-polish phase however, each product will keep working them out to a finer degree. Just do a good job with the more gritty pre-polish first. Itf serves as the foundation of all later work.
I did a lot of sanding on scratches at first, starting with a 400 grit, then 800 grit, and then 1000 to 1500 grit wet sanding paper. It seems to work best to sand only in one direction with each grade of paper. Seems to cut better and more evenly. However, after I became more knowledgeable about the polishing I stopped sanding except in extreme cases and just polished, and polished, and polished. Be careful here however, as to much pressure in a concentrated area can heat up and burn the aluminum. I finally did this once toward the end of the job and was plenty worried as it looked bad. However, I let it cool, as others had advised, and the next day I hit it with the polish and the burn color came out. I was relieved. Part of my problem was that I was using a pretty dirty pad which had glazed spots on it which generated more heat, I was tired, and getting impatient. When you first start polishing make it a point to feel the skin you are working on so you get a feel for how it can heat up and when in doubt take a feel and you can back off from overworking a spot, let it cool and return to it. Also take warning. When you get tired stop. Don't hurry your work. Do it right the first time so you don't have to come back or worse yet have a surface that is not uniformly polished.
You will have areas where the big polisher can't reach. I used a high speed hand drill with buffer pad and occasionally a Dremel tool with buff pad around and on window areas and hidden seams/joints. Some times a finger tip and even a Q tip and a crafts stick with cloth wrapped on it was used both for polishing and cleaning.
When I was all done with the polishing (a week later and aftter washing down trailer) I then put a final coat of auto polish/sealent (see para. 1.). It is a wipe on, haze up, wipe off product. Maintaining the finish to my satisfaction is going to be an ongoing learning process. In the six weeks since I "finished" I have washed it twice, wiped it down once with wet chamois, and used a fine dust cloth to dust. It cleans up nicely but as you might suspect you get water spots, from rain, etc. so you have to wipe it down. The Chamois seems to work very nicely.
One final comment. or repeat. If you trailer has been polished before you may not need to use the pre-polish to cut oxidation and can go right to the Metal Polish. Experiment with samples to find out. You may not want to used the AP300 but it sure gives a finish shine to things and the smoother the polish job the easier it will be to maintain. If I need to polish the trailer again in a year I will use the AP300 as it goes a long way and is easy to work. In some instances if you have a polished trailer now you might just get by with the AP300, if you are looking for something other then what you used in the past. Click here to return to Airstream Page.