Windshield spider web scratch removal
October 25th, 2008. Filed under: Tools.
Forward fast to this summer. I’m roaming the vendor’s booths at Oshkosh and a guy polishing a scratched airplane windshield caught my eye. I was instantly drawn in and watched in awe as Tom, a Flitz polish dealer, turn a plexiglass windshield, that was scratched (intentionally with sandpaper) so badly it looked like a milk jug, into a crystal clear jewel. WOW! I found my solution.
Flitz’s instructions for aircraft windshields are essentially this:
1) Sand windshield with 1,000 or 2,000 grit paper. (This is an optional step depending on how severe your spider web scratches are.)
2) Put a dab on their polishing ball and start slowly spreading it around, then rev full speed. A fast (up to 2500 rpm) electric drill should be used. I’ve found that cordless drills really don’t spin fast enough.
3) Work a small area – say an 8″ square area.
4) Continue until all residue is gone.
5) Repeat starting with #2
By the way, this is this the same the same technique to restore car headlight lenses.
I’ve now done this on both of the club planes and WOW what a huge difference!!!! It didn’t remove all the scratches, but it removed 85% of them. Enough that it feels like new glass in front of me and the sun refraction safety issue is now gone.
I deviated from the instructions in two areas:
1) I didn’t use the polishing ball with a corded drill.
I brought with me a cordless drill and a couple batteries. As I mentioned before, the speed of the cordless drill really didn’t cut it – figuratively and literally. Tom warned me about that, but I thought my “fast” cordless would do the trick. Believe Tom and use a high speed corded drill. What I did use, since I had it in the car with me, was a corded random orbital buffer.
2) I didn’t sand the windshield before polishing.
Well, that’s not completely true, I did wet sand the passenger side with 800 grit (because I couldn’t find finer and thought that was “close enough”). I then promptly freaked out and broke into a cold sweat. It looked as if I just ruined the windshield. With great haste and newfound motivation I put the Flitz to work. Let me tell you, it removed all the haze of scratches I just created – whew!!
There are two types of Flitz – paste and liquid. Though I bought both, so far I’ve only used the paste because this is what Tom demoed and I believe it has more “cutting” power (the Flitz literature says it’s stronger and you can feel the fine grit in its paste). I used about ½ of a 5.29 oz. tube for both planes. I finished the project with a once over of Race Glaze Polish & Sealant and Raze Glaze Gloss Highlighter – two other products I just love and use on my car. Adding them seemed to kick the clarity up a couple notches (and laying down a coat of Gloss Highlighter will make it easy to remove bugs post-flight too!)
Probably in the spring, I’ll do a complete job sanding first and using the ball with a corded drill. I’ll bet, then, I’ll remove 99.5% of all the scratches on the windshield.
What have you used to bring new life to your plane?
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December 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Great product report. FWIW, I used to work at an auto refinishing supply store (think auto parts but for body shops – selling paint, sandpaper, etc.). At one time, sandpaper did not come any finer than 600 grit. Then 3M came out with 1000 grit and others followes with 1200 grit. The 3M rep said there really isn’t any standard measure for grit above 600, so those ultra-fine grit papers are really just marketing numbers. 800, 1000, 1200, pretty much all the same. They are all one step courser than polishing compound. If you really need to cut deep to get at the scratches, you are safe to start with 600, wet sanding of course, then follow with an ultra fine sandpaper. You could follow that with a wet cloth and cornstarch before starting your polishes. Cornstarch was what the old paint shop guys used before they came out with the ultra fine papers.
Also, much better to use a random pattern orbital buffer than any other kind. I have one from Porter Cable that works pretty good, very similar to a DA sander from National Detoit with a counterweight for the random pattern. I can plug it into my 800 watt inverter, hooked to my car battery and polish my plane out on the ramp.
If you use a pad on a drill, be very careful not to use too much pressure – not even enough to slow the drill – keep it moving always, and change pads often.