Cleaning your Aluminum
Products
Warning & Note: Polish, treat and Clean your
cabinets at your own risk.
Along with the disclaimer above, we would like to
give you insight regarding aluminum cleaning and polishing. Be very
careful about cleaning agents on aluminum products. I discovered the hard
way, that if you use strong chemicals or shop or household degreasers or
cleaners, they WILL damage
the look and color of any aluminum product. NEVER use these strong
degreasers. Once they etch the surface (as we discovered the hard way), it
seems to be impossible to repair the damage.
So NEVER NEVER NEVER use the ACID cleaners, called
Aluminum brighteners' if you like the look and
shine of your aluminum products. The Aluminum brighteners etch the surface
and thus change the look to a DULL flat coarse finish that I personally do not
like at all; very unattractive in my opinion. Once this is done, it would take
hours upon hours to try and regain the flat smooth aluminum finish with a
polishing wheel and polishes (not worth it). The Aluminum brighteners are
sold as a fast and easy way to clean aluminum, but the results are not for fine
for smooth finishes that you want to keep fine and smooth and polishable.
These aluminum brighteners are sold in auto parts and boat stores and so on.
Aluminum is VERY VERY Soft metal, even though it is
very durable and perfect metal for many products. So be careful not to
scratch, dent or gouge your aluminum products.
Cleaning:
We have found that to keep the clean neat
finish that the aluminum sheet metal manufacturers provide, is to simply clean
your aluminum products with household 409(TM). Simple Green(TM) leaves a
film behind, but 409(TM) cleans it without etching the aluminum and does not
leave a film. Window cleaners do not work.
Polishing:
To polish aluminum to a nice shiny finish and
showy finish, use standard aluminum polish, such as Maguire's aluminum mag wheel
polish. But, due to fine scratches in aluminum sheet metal, after you
polish it, use 409 to take off the left gray polish left in the fine scratches,
and then it looks great and shines like magic.
Finger Prints and Blemishes from handling,
installing, etc.
As you may see in our installation photos, you
will notice dirty finger prints on the surfaces. The good news is, these
finger prints will disappear by using 409(TM) and a standard aluminum polish as
noted above.
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