Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

'99 Bennington. Previous owner stored it on the lake. Had decent water lines on both toons. I wanted to get the water lines off if possible. I'm not concerned with a mirror image, but am shooting for a consistent medium gray. Such as a brushed aluminum.

First attempt was aluminex "aluminum brightener" then pressure washer. Everything below the water line did what i was hoping. Everything above the water line turned white. Picture below.

I stopped for a bit and did some reading. Found a few bass boat guys saying 120 grit on an random orbital palm sander leaves a consistent finish. I picked up a sander and 120, 180 and 240 grit. The finish is fine by me, but how do I get it consistent? I can see the path of the sander.

Pictures show most of what I'm talking about. Pictures uploaded in reverse order so bottom to top is order of operations.

Any suggestions?

I feel for ya man,,, that's allot of work to not be happy with the results. I think yo need to be consistent with the final pass. What ever you do as a last prep must be on the entire toon IMHO. I am going to go with a power grinder with a buffing wheel and white and rouge compound just like I do with my Harley parts,,, good luck !!!

Get them all sanded smooth and looking like you want... Then acid wash them and it should look even!

Mrtoler wrote:Get them all sanded smooth and looking like you want... Then acid wash them and it should look even!

Acid wash with the Aluinex I have or something different? Hydrochloric acid is the highest ingredient in the Aluminex.

Just keep going up on the grit till you get to 4000 and you should be even, then protect it with shark hide

I use either sharkhide cleaner or an AC coil cleaner to acid wash the tubes.