Removing Canopy Scratches

22 Jun 2004 Removing Canopy Scratches

Q: Greetings all, Installed the painted canopy and removed all the protective coatings today. Despite taking precautions I’ve got some pretty noticable scratches. Some are light , like chaff marks and
others are scratches you can feel with your fingernail. What product or methods should I use to remove them? Thanks, Mark

A: The light chaff marks can be polished out with ultra fine polishing compound. I recommend 3M Perfect-it II rubbing compound Part no. 05973. Then, buff to a shine with 3M Perfect-it Foam Polishing Pad Glaze, part no. 05996. This is what professional car painters use to color sand and buff out paint jobs to a mirror finish. For the heaver scratches, I’d use 3M 1500 wet or dry sandpaper, and wet sand out the scratch. Then use the above compound and polishing glaze to shine the Plexiglas like new.
Danny King
Beautiful Doll 80434

A2: Aircraft Spruce also sells products that worked very well for me. They come in three levels:
Novus Plastic Polish #3 – for heavy scratches
Novus Plastic Polish #2 – for fine scratches and I also found it works well to take any paint haze off the glass
Novus Plastic Polish #1 – final polish and the only thing I use for glass cleaning

8 oz of #2 and #3 will do a couple of canopies. I got the 64 oz bottle of #1 and it looks like it will last years.

Carl Froehlich