Originally posted by ZackJones
Beautiful bike! How did you polish the cranks, they look really cool.
Zack
Thanks!
The crankset was taken off an 80's Fuji Royale. Don't know the year, but the cranks were matte aluminum, and beat up--lots of scratches and dents.
My dad has a buffing machine that he used to buff the paint on a fender he spray painted once. I bought a can of metal polish cream (which said that it would work for aluminum) from the auto shop and went to work. I just spread cream on it and buffed it to a shine. The process took forever. Probably 1 hour per crank. There were hard-to-polish corners that I had to go over several times...
This can be done on any aluminum part that you needs polishing. I have a seat post that I want to polish, but am afraid I'll make it too thin, since seat posts have to be accurate to every tenth of a millimeter.