Polishing Stainless Steel Screw Heads

[nhschneider]

I have stripped everything off the deck of my boat in preparation for its painting. Stanchions, cleats, tracks - everything except the masts and hatches. I’m going to install new fasteners when I reinstall the removed components, however, I’d like to have the heads of the fasteners polished before I install them and that’s not a big deal if you’re only polishing a few but for my genoa tracks alone it’s 108 1/4” screws. I have a bench grinder but I’m having trouble finding a sanding wheel (1/2” arbor) that can sand the heads in one pass (I’ve got the buffing wheel). I realize that I could do the experimentation to find the best wheels to do the job but I was hoping to take advantage of someone else’s experience and possibly save me some time. I thank you in advance.

Fair winds and calm seas.

[Dave_S]

You shouldn't need to sand the heads. To polish small ss parts we use the tapered spike on a bench grinder with mops. A sisal mop with the grey wax/grit, skip the stitched calico mop and go straight to the loose leaf cotton mop with the white rosen. This will give you a mirror finish.

P.S. they will get hot, a bar with a tapped hole to use as a holder will protect the threads and reduce the burns to your hands.