More Polishing Fun!

[John Rinker]

Here's a fun, rainy-day diversion. Recently, I had to repair a bar-end shifter and when I took off the mounts I began looking at the shiny silver under the worn coating. I decided to remove the stock coating on the Shimano mounts and ended up with some very shiny new mounts. 

Cheers, John

[Patrick Moore]

John: Lovely. I’ve got an Ultegra R8100 crankset in anodized black waiting for shining up. (Someone posted a photo of a similar crank that he’d painstakingly polished to Superbe Pro shininess.) What do you charge?

Back in the real world, years ago someone sold me cheaply a Shimano Dura Ace centerpull brakeset (I was told that Shimano made these for 6 months in 1976 before switching to Campy caliper copies; were they Tourneys with a different model name etched into the metal?) that he’d painstakingly and lovingly polished to a full-moon-like shine. Really lovely. I wish I’d kept them.

[Ted Durant]

On Monday, October 20, 2025 at 7:01:14 PM UTC-5 John Rinker wrote:

 I decided to remove the stock coating on the Shimano mounts and ended up with some very shiny new mounts. 

Reminds me of the SunTour BarCons on Grant's Pal Jeff's bike. As some of you might recall, Pal Jeff is an ironworker. The palms of his hands could probably smooth off the edges of a brick. His Riv had mustache bars with BarCons on the end, and they were the shiniest bits of aluminum I've ever seen on a bike.

Ted Durant

Milwaukee, WI USA

[Gordon Stam]

I took a buffer to these brass wing bolts and shined them up a bit. Not much though, given the surface finish, but they catch the light a little more now. 

BTW these work really well for rack bolts, back there under the seat where there's not a lot of room for a tool ( I removed the pump that's usually back there in the way for the picture).