I never have anything prepared for Tech Week. But a couple people liked this process when I showed it to em, though alot of you may have figured this out already. For about 1/3 of the price of the various Stainless bolt kits and way way WAY cheaper than chrome bolts you can take the cheap SS bolts you can get at places like boltdepot.com and pretty them up. What you need: Drill Press 60-80 grit sandpaper 100-120 grit sandpaper 200-260 grit sandpaper Extra Step: Buff pad on angle grinder or buffing wheel. This is a 5/16" by 3" and they're like .50 cents a piece. Way cheaper than chrome. The way I'm doing it- I slapped a 220 and 120 adhesive disc on a piece of steel plate I had lying around and since I go through more 60 grits than anything, I just used regular old loose sheet for that. You can use loose sheet for all of them though, which is how I normally do it. Chuck the bolt up in the press. I just tighten it by hand, it should hold just fine without damaging threads. Go ahead and press down several times while moving the paper around. 30-40 touches should do it. It sounds like alot but it only takes 30 seconds or so. When you're done the letters and such should be gone. Next move on to a few presses (10 or so) on the 100 grit and 15 or so on the 200 grit. At this point you have a pretty neat, engine turned looking bolt. Real racy. I grab em lightly with the vise grips and hit em with the polishing wheel. This is after maybe 10 seconds or so. So from start to finish this bolt maybe took a minute and a half. I did all the bolts for the ENTIRE CAR in about 2 hours. And all the bolts for the entire car only cost about 80 bucks from bolt depot and they're all polished and pretty. If you dont have a polishing wheel, you can get a polishing pad for your angle grinder at LOWES for a few bucks. You have to be careful cause if you hit the wrong angle you'll shred it, but I did a bunch with mine. Yay Polished Bolts!!
Hey! How about polishing those bolts with 304 stainless sheet? You end up with polished bolts and an engine-turned sheet! Automation...
Nice! I just spent some time doing similar to some SS carriage bolts for my nerf bars. Poor man's chrome!
Looks good. Just remember to use a stainless bolt in the proper application. They are not that strong but they look great polished and will stay that way. Went to boltdepot.com website and of course they don't ship outside the US. Canadians get left out again. lol.
If you're worried about screwing up the threads on your bolt or don't want to take that risk, you could take two nuts and tighten them against each other on the bolt then tighten the chuck on the nuts. Just a thought.
Who couldn't love polished ss bolts! That's a great tip and shows good craftsmanship when putting a car truck or bike together. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
I've done this for years, but use a hand held electric drill, that way you can smooth the bevel on the edge too. Also works well for carriage bolts. I have also just kept the bolt in the drill, and ran it against the polishing wheel to polish it (wheel NOT turning)
That's a good idea! I also realized I forgot to mention in my post that I do lift the metal plate up to a 30° angle and back down with the bolt touching to get the crown. I might have to try the drill polishing though!
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