Restoring plastic

[Bomba01 35]

G'day peeps

Need help with restoring my Falcon plastics

Firstly I have a practice bumper (see pic) so I am willing to try different methods.

I know I'm not going to get the deep scratches out and have so far sanded half the bumper with 400, 1200 and 2000 grit wet and dry. I am happy with the smoothness however as you can see in the pic it has a milky white appearance now. 

Have I done something wrong or is there a way of restoring the black finish?

 

Will the same thing happen with the chassis and other harder plastic parts?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

Thanks

Chris

[Saito2 1121]

There's an article over on Tamiyabase on restoring plastic in the articles section. Hope this helps. https://tamiyabase.com/articles/46-technical/143-restoring-plastic

[graemevw 469]

Bumpers are normally a softer more flexible plastic, not sure polish will work well. If you have a scrap piece similar id try sanding then reforming the surface with a heat gun. Might work, might not. Probably a certain amount of risk too. 

[Maverick74 21]

You could spray light coat of black then go over with clear coat.  I did mine like that and turned out well

[magnumb 72]

If you are really daring might try a light sweep with a propane torch. 

[graemevw 469]

Ive been wondering about acetone vapour recently too, or maybe other solvent vapours depending on plastic. 

[Hibernaculum 854]

In addition to using the sand paper, you need to use the Tamiya polishing compounds, I think. I haven't read the Tamiyabase article, but normally it's a progressive process from coarse --> fine paper, followed by coarse --> fine compound.

The compound is a cream, and the finest one is a polish. But the impact of each is negated, unless you use the previous step. So you have to be gradual about it. You can't jump from coarse or medium paper, or even coarse compound, straight to the final polish compound i.e. there are no shortcuts like you find in IKEA stores. You have to walk through the whole store.

This means it's a slow process. But if you really go step by step, the end result should be "shiny/like new".

The only plastic this process won't work on, is polycarbonate - where the slightly "milky" look still remains, even after 17 years of furious polishing with the polish compound. But all other plastics should turn up shiny in the end.