Buffing acrylic fish tank
- Thread starter j-lor
- Start date
Only one way to find out lol… just send it… 400 is a good place to start. Go through ur grits, polish… and if u can still see scratches u can step down below 400 if needed. Use an orbital sander for the best results. Ive done small tanks by hand with the rubber blocks. I do not recommend using palm sanders. They leave more scratches than ur trying to get out. Buffers also work well for the final polish steps. Mcguiers makes assorted grit car polishes that work well and also a general type plastic polish thats cheaper and comparable to novus for bringing the tank to clear again after grit/paper. Its a tedious process and ull find u can kinda go as far as u want too for clarity/work.
My sander is a palm sander. Lol. I'll look into buying an orbital. Thanks.
Good advice above. I recently worked on my 450gal which had small scratches along most of the inside front, from bottom to about 6 inches up. I used down to 250 grit, then 600 grit, 1200grit, then I jumped up to 2500grit since that's all the hardware stores here had. Then I used Novus #2 fine sratch remover. For this final polishing, I found that thick wool pads worked better than sponge pads. It is a tedius process. I spent maybe 15 hours total. I got the scratches out but the end result is that the entire area is still slightly hazy.
Judging from the time I spent, I would need about 20-25 more hours to get the acrylic looking clear or at least more clear than it is right now. I just filled the tank back up and the haziness I saw isn't really apparent when the tank is filled.
My conclusion is that for the minor sratches my tank had, I would choose not to even mess with it again next time. It is a time consuming process. Good luck.
Judging from the time I spent, I would need about 20-25 more hours to get the acrylic looking clear or at least more clear than it is right now. I just filled the tank back up and the haziness I saw isn't really apparent when the tank is filled.
My conclusion is that for the minor sratches my tank had, I would choose not to even mess with it again next time. It is a time consuming process. Good luck.
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cant hurt to try in an area or the back wall and see how it goes since thats what u have. I know for sure whatever one i have did not work well lol… I ended up just doing the tank by hand with a rubber block just to learn the process.
