Do y'all do anything to dural gears or just bolt them on and fly? That is, do you consider them finished when you buy them?
I ran into a "drinking from a spitoon" problem with a recently aquired dural gear. (If you are not familiar with the term "drinking from a spitoon" problems, they are those where solving one problem leads to another, and solving that problem, leads to yet another -- Like drinking from a spitoon, there is no place to "bite off the string" and the problem is one big long slimy string.)
Anyway, I thought I would clean up the stamped edges of a dural gear a little with a file. That worked fine, but left a slight ridge at the edges.
I cleaned that up with 100 paper, and all was fine, but it left some noticeable scratches near both edges.
So, I went to 400, then 600, to get rid of the scratches. That worked fine, but left a dull center, and shiny edges that were growing.
Biting the bullet, I evened all out with 00 steel wool, which worked well, but left a bright finish that begged to be polished, and a few scratches from the manufacturer that showed.
The final step was rubbing compound to clean all. That worked well, but now the manufacturer's scratches are even more prominent.
At what stage should I have stopped? Or should I have never started?
Larry F