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Brush stainless steel without electric tools

Can I use sandpaper in a circular motion to make a brushed finish on my stainless steel table top? Thanks for any suggestions!

Tool less

Marta Koepke
student - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
November 21, 2010

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Hi, Marta.

It totally depends on what you mean by brushed finish and what look would be acceptable to you. Most people mean a unidirectional finish that is actually done with one quick scritch from a very large belt sander. I doubt that you could do it by hand without overlap lines being obvious unless you have the patience of a saint.

But you can certainly, and very easily, put scratches into stainless steel with sandpaper, and overlaps are not necessarily ugly if done with a flair. The beautiful and familiar small circles called a "dowel" or " jeweled" or "machine turned" finish is an example of an overlapped finish (letters 13213 and 26417 illustrate it); and while this is too small and precise to do by hand, some sort of overlapping arcs should be doable if you have talent.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
November 24, 2010