How to remove these stainless steel scratches

polishrepairscratchesstainlesssteel

I'm trying to fix a repair gone awry. I noticed some scratches on my stainless steel range of unknown origin. Things like cookware never touch that part of the stove, and I never use abrasive cleaners on it, but I digress. I want them gone.

Did some research and most DIY guides and products say to apply a mild abrasive (scotch brite is common) with the grain until it buffs out. Bob Vila here said to use a microfiber cloth with barkeepers friend, which I had.

I followed his guide but (to my shock) it made it far worse! Here's the after. You can see the original scratches going up and down across the grain:

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Yikes! What happened? What can I do?

Best Answer

I can't tell from the picture, but ideally, if you can remove that piece and work on it freely, here's what you can do:

  1. Use a scotch brite pad and uniformly create scratches (the trick is to always always go in the same direction). This pad here is commonly used to mimic #4 finish in stainless steel. You can also go to heavier / coarser pads.

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  1. If you actually have gouges, and assuming you have access to an orbital sander, like this one (example), you would use a heavier grit pad to blend in all the scratches, then gradually go to a finer grit, 600 / 800 or so, to make all the scratches disappear. Then you can, if you want, put a grain on it again with the scotch brite pad.

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  1. To finish it up, you can clean the stainless steel with stainless steel cleaner and polish.

    stainless steel cleaner and polish.

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