If you have ever thought of attempting this, DON'T!!!
After hours of work, I'm not sure I've made a difference!
What a royal pain in the a..!!!
Paid $75 for a kit. Worked me a$$ off! Maybe made a small dent in improving the lenses.
Curious as to other people's experiences.
Have you tried acetone? It is amazing what it will clean.
Have you tried acetone? It is amazing what it will clean.
I'm not actually cleaning them, but polishing the scratches out. You have to go through 4 grades of sand paper, then a polishing/rubbing compound. All the while being careful to lubricate with water. Crazy amount of work.
Cerium oxide kind of works, but only scratches you can’t catch your nail on
I was just going to mention that Paul, asked around all week at a couple of restoration shops I was at and
they all recomended using Cerium oxide too, They say it works well. Probably depending how deep the
scratch is, like Paul said.
Brian
Yeah, still need a lot of patience with it. Really good at removing foggy-ness from glass. You can buy the cerium oxide from amazon. People say you can use an attachment to a portable drill to buff with, but that would drive me crazy, too damn slow. I'm using it with either my automotive buffer or my small air buffing tool, much more RPM. There are videos on youtube on how to do it, you have to keep it wet to some degree but not dilute it too much, make it into a paste. But then it dries and you spray on a little more water. I'm not great at it, but it works better than anything else I've found.
Anyway, check youtube under cerium oxide polishing, ton of videos.
BTW, the powder is cheap, like $10, this should be cheap to do, just crazy labor intensive. I've never heard of sanding the glass before polishing, interesting, but never tried that.
I bought a kit that started with about a 150 grit disc, to a 200 grit disc, to 400 to 500 or so. Almost nothing. Then felt pad disc's using the Cerium powder. It's a ton of work. I have probably 3-4 hours in each lens.
With more patients they could likely get to be perfect.
But I'm happy enough for what I'm planning to do with them. Add light and hang on my deck.
In the end it was worth it. 4 more to go.
Although these not the exact before and after's, the ones that are done looked just like the scratched ones before I began.
Got the first of two lights up