HP Forum Archive 08

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How to polish the aluminum bezel of a HP 11C Voyager Message #1 Posted by Irqan Rodriguez on 23 Mar 2002, 6:22 a.m. I have recently been successful in fixing a beat-up Hp 11C calculator. (Glass and the rest of the calculator looks pretty good) But the aluminum bezel looks awful with all its wear and tiny scratch marks. I have tried to polish the aluminum and anything is better than what it was before. But I am wondering if anybody have tips on how to get back the original look. What kind of metal polish or sandpaper is required to get close to what it looked like before. Or rather what technique is required. Any tip would be helpful. I am sure I cannot be the first to try to do this. Thanks Irqan

Re: How to polish the aluminum bezel of a HP 11C Voyager Message #2 Posted by Hans Brueggemann [GER] on 25 Mar 2002, 3:52 a.m., in response to message #1 by Irqan Rodriguez irquan, i took a look at the hpmuseum picture of the 11c and would suggest the following (no guarantee whatsoever, this is the 'modellers way', i never tried it on an HP!) 1) fix a sheet of sandpaper with self adhesive tape onto a glass pane with the rough side upwards. to achieve best results, it *must* be a glass pane or glass table. make sure there are no dust or other foreign particles between the glass and the sandpaper. the sandpaper has to be of the wet sanding type. 2) across the sandpaper, fix an old ruler. 3) this is for testing: take a piece of aluminium sheet metal and slide it along the ruler and across the sand paper. use plenty of water with soap or dish cleaner as`'lubrication'. only apply little pressure on the aluminium sheet while sanding. 4) from time to time, check for the sanding marks on the aluminum. maybe, you have to vary the 'roughness' of the sandpaper to achieve a result that matches the hp bezel. when successfull, take a fresh sheet of sandpaper and repeat step 3), this time using the bezel. 5) rinse the bezel with plenty of water (do not touch the grinded surface) and dry it with a lint-free cloth or a hairdryer. 6) and now for the trick: *as_soon_as_possible* after the sanding, apply a thin coat of clear metal varnish to the bezel and let dry at least ten hours. this will prevent the surface from oxidizing and getting a matt gray look. 7) if you find that the surface is not as glossy as it should be, you can apply another layer of varnish and even try to polish it with polish fo *acrylic glass*. this will give you glass-like surfaces. do not use car polish, it is much too coarse. that should do the job. cheers, hans

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