Kawasaki KZ650 cafe-racer. Headlight brackets.

Here is another pair of polished parts. This time it’s headlight brackets. Initially they looked like this:

I added to them a bit of my touch by drilling holes and applying additional polishing. Sounds simple, but it was quite s lot of work . However, it made a hell of difference.

I am often asked how I do polishing like this. Usually I do it in this way: firstly I remove cast defects, seams and so on where it’s possible. This work I do with help of sandpaper wrapped around rubber blocks, delta sanders (have two of them) and Dremel.  Then I  sandpaper dry with sandpaper up to 800 grit with delta sanders and Dremel. Then I use 3M Trizact or its analogues of different manufacturers to remove traces of 800 grit sanpaper. These products are to be used wet. They are of different grit too, I use grits from 800 to 3000.  Then it’s time for first polishing. I use various headpieces for Dremel for hard to reach places. For other cases I mostly use buffing cloth wheels  installed on bench grinder.  Once surface polished all defects (traces of sandpaper and so on) became visible. I remove those of them that could be removed and do second polishing. Some aluminum parts need to be polished long and in all directions to became perfect, while for other parts long polishing makes no good, as it exhibits tiny defects (like pores).  Of polishing compounds I use two:  mostly liquid Doctor Wax Metal Polish and solid past (supposed to be Diamond polishing compound , dunno of what concentration, but it works just good ).

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