Polishing Keggles!

Hey all! I just called it a night on my new keggle project. I bought two 15.5 gallon kegs, two 6 gallon carboys, a grain mill, and a bench capper from a guy recently, and I'm converting one of the kegs into a brew pot! I've been kit brewing for almost a year now, and I'm planning on making 10 gallon batches, then going all-grain, then finally building a single-tier system. One step at a time I guess! The guy painted the kegs, or got them that way, I'm not sure. But I've been taking the paint off, and following a stainless steel polishing guide on HBT - slowly restoring the kegs to a mirror finish. To finish off the night, I enjoyed a delicious German Style Kolsh from Rasenmaher, brewed in Oklahoma City, OK. Here's my progress!

EDIT: Rasenmaher German Style Kolsh, from Huebert Brewing Co. in OKC, OK, which was obviously drank too fast haha

Nice work. That before and after is amazing.

Looking good so far ...
Looks nice, but sure is a PITA, eh?

Major pain, but you can't beat the look . Using gator grit pads?

SleepyCreekBrews said:

Looking good so far ...
Looks nice, but sure is a PITA, eh?

Click to expand...

Thanks! Oh man, it's bad. It got easier once I started to see the change!

blakelyc said:

Major pain, but you can't beat the look . Using gator grit pads?

Click to expand...

I couldn't find the Gator Grit brand at HD, but I found a similar style pad that came in a pack of 2 coarse, 2 medium, and 2 fine pads. It's looking like I'm going to blow through the whole pack on one keg, switch to some ultra-fine sand paper to do the rest by hand, and then buff to a mirror finish with some polishing sticks and a cloth wheel. Can't wait to see myself (and my brew) in it!

I thought the Gator brand was at Lowes

If it's paint, why not coat it in paint stripper and let that do all the heavy work? Save you time, money and muscle. Once all the paint blisters up, just wipe and hit the hard spots with the sandpaper and polish.

With as much work as this is I was thinking of making a machine that rolls the keg against a polishing wheel. just set it on there and let it do it's thing. come back the next day and it's all shiny...How much work do you have into the one keg?

dmcman73 said:

If it's paint, why not coat it in paint stripper and let that do all the heavy work? Save you time, money and muscle. Once all the paint blisters up, just wipe and hit the hard spots with the sandpaper and polish.

Click to expand...

Ah! I'll do that on the second one, thanks!

Toymaker said:

With as much work as this is I was thinking of making a machine that rolls the keg against a polishing wheel. just set it on there and let it do it's thing. come back the next day and it's all shiny...How much work do you have into the one keg?

Click to expand...

That might work, these were in pretty rough shape so I've been gradually going from coarse to fine Gator Pads. After I get all the nicks and scratches out, some machine to buff it could save a lot of time! I've spent about 7 hours over the past 2 days.