Prop Polishing

[cribber]

Just a little background ~ I boat the lowland lakes of central Florida that the average depth is 10-15 feet on the Harris Chain. Lots of shelves near the shore and you can quickly find yourself planing across 3 feet and dropping in no time. Well to say the least, props here are like lawn mower blades ~ dispensable and hope you only hit sand instead of a buried log or God knows what. If you boat here, you "WILL" hit something... the water clarity is very low. Anyway... I noticed my holeshot time last weekend dropped from under 4 seconds to what seemed like minutes and checked out my prop and there were gouges, nicks, scrapes, scratches, and most likely a lot of cavitation pitting. Today we had a lot of boomers in the area so not a good day on the water.

Thank you Oops for your inspirations, Dude you rock!!!

I started with 400 grit wet/dry to pull the paint back so I could see what the aluminum 14.25X21" looked like on my Glastron GT185 3.0L prop. I then moved to 800 grit to smooth everything out and worked my way to 1000 grit and finished with Mothers Powerball with polish for plastic. It took about 3 hours and I ended up with this finish.

I made sure it balanced out because I've had to sharpen my share of lawnmower blades and everything seemed to be okay. I'm taking it out on the lake tomorrow and will let ya know how we made out. It looks nearly like stainless and I know when we get back tomorrow, it'll be dull as a beer can. Just want to see what I accomplished before hitting it with some paint.

 

[rndn]

Re: Prop Polishing

Although the prop looks great, you really can't tell if the prop is balanced the same way you can with lawn mower blades. If you had to remove metal from any of the blades, I suggest you take it to a good prop shop where they can make sure it's balanced for you.

 

[cribber]

Re: Prop Polishing

I tried not to remove any metal but spent equal time and effort on each blade. Just got back from laying down 50 GPS miles on Harris and Eustis and I got my top end back plus about 100 rpm and now have a WOT of 4800, so I need to keep an eye on the tach. Didn't expect that... and it's as dull as aluminum can get. I'll scuff it with some 1500 grit this week and hit it with some black lacquer.

http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w310/Cheep_photos/?action=view&current=PropAfter.jpg

Had a great day out and the prop never gave us a bit of trouble from idle thru WOT and she planed out just ever so slightly quicker than when the prop was new back in March.