Will it ever shine?

[Troy Turner]

Picked up a Grizzly bandsaw the other day…I’ll brag about the score later I was taking it apart, replacing a few things here and there, and started working on the table. I hit it with a wire brush in a few spots, bar keeper’s friend, scotch brite pad, 800, 1500, and paste wax with a buffer. Am I expecting too much?

table top.jpgtable top 2.jpg

[Erik Loza]

FYI that "shiny" table tops are actually not that desirable. Paste wax tends to block up and scrape off rather than permeate the pores of the cast iron top, which is what you want. Whatever finish a grey or red scotchbrite leaves is as polished as you would want. Hope this helps,

Erik

[Bruce Page]

You can get a better looking finish using a ROS. I would start with ~ 120 - 150 grit on your table and progress from there.

[Robert Hayward]

My thoughts are that it is a bandsaw table and not the hood on your new Phantom. Clean it up nicely and paste wax it to keep it clean of rust. Then use it.

[Carl Beckett]

It looks good to me.

Assuming it was 'flat' to start with, overdoing it with ROS and aggressive sanding actually rounds it off and no longer flat. I am always very cautious about sandpaper (I just dont - scotchbrite with some BKF and thats it. Sometimes I scrape bad spots with a razor blade)

Get rid of surface rust. Wax. Then use it (the best way to keep the surface shiny is running wood through it!!)

[Dwayne Watt]

Cast iron (gray iron) never really gets shiny because of the large amount of carbon in the material. The carbon content is why the material most people call cast iron is really gray iron or sometimes ductile (nodular) iron. Cast steel would shine up a bit more but you seldom find that on a piece of woodworking machinery and certainly not on a Grizzly saw table. The blotchy coloration you show in the second picture is about as good as it gets with gray iron that has seen rust (short of re-machining). Even then the color will be gray, not bright like steel.

[Bill Dufour]

I. do not under stand what 800 and 1,500 mean. 400 or 600 with a ros is as high as I ever go. Do to much and the blade insert and miter bar will need some work. I round over all the corners and edges for safety.
Bill D

[Bruce Wrenn]

Picked up a Grizzly bandsaw the other day…I’ll brag about the score later I was taking it apart, replacing a few things here and there, and started working on the table. I hit it with a wire brush in a few spots, bar keeper’s friend, scotch brite pad, 800, 1500, and paste wax with a buffer. Am I expecting too much?

table top.jpgtable top 2.jpg

If you want shiney, go buy a mirror, or have it chrome plated. It's a tool designed to WORK!

[Troy Turner]

All y’all make good points. It’s absolutely going to get used for it’s intended purpose once I get her back together. Guess I was comparing it to my table saw that I’ve had about a year. Bought it new so I’m able to keep the table clean and waxed. The bandsaw is about 13 yrs old.

Thanks for the replies gents

[Frank Pratt]

Run lots & lots of wood across the top. That'll fix it

[johnny means]

Anything can be made to shine. Look on YouTube and you'll find people literally polishing turds. In order to make your to shine you'd have to start at a low grit and completely obliterate the scratch pattern of each grit with the next grit up to about 3000 grit. https://www.google.com/search?q=shin...J9fy1qSFI,st:0