D.M. Procida wrote:

I'm restoring an old tape recorder. The capstan flywheel is very lightly
pitted. I'd like to polish this out.

Right, there seems to be a certain amount of confusion and trouble
arising from this.

What's pitted is the capstan flywheel, i.e. the flywheel pertaining to
the capstan. It's on the capstan shaft, inside the machine.

The flywheel is driven by a flat rubber belt, in turn driven by a pulley
on the capstan motor.

I have absolutely no intention of dicking around with the surface of the
capstan.

No-one is a moron, ****wit or idiot for not understanding this first
time.

When I say the flywheel is very lightly pitted, I mean very lightly
pitted indeed. It's not so much the pits themselves that concern me, but
their very slightly raised edges. These are what I'd like to polish
down.

In any case, what needs to be polished out are very tiny superficial
blemishes. Probably they don't affect the sound at all - the flywheel
must weight about 750g, just for a start - but it's possible that they
induce a tiny amount of vibration in the captsan's rotation.

The tape recorder is a Teac A-3340, a semi-pro four-track from the early
1970s, and truly gorgeous.

Daniele