Whilst we polish a lot of Stainless Steel we also polish non-ferrous material such as aluminium, brass, copper and bronze. Recently we were asked to apply a Satin Finish onto some thick bronze plate profiles.
Bronze of course is synonymous as being the ‘third’ metal in medal tables and has been a semi-precious material since, well, The Bronze Age (sorry). But in plate form it tends to look dull, discoloured and decidedly depressing.
In fact it looks like this:
Our client wanted us to Satin Finish it, giving a smooth grained appearance as well as taking out the discolouration and surface defects.
Bronze is a fairly soft material even in thick plate and we wanted to ensure we didn’t remove too much surface stock so we used an Ultra Sonic thickness measuring device (rather than the traditional vernier which only measures the thickness at the edges) before we started to check that the plate was fairly even. Processing it with abrasives to achieve a satin finish gave a much more uniform surface and took out all the horrible stains.
