john thompson wrote:
Have a fifty year old or so aluminium lamp housing that has been
sprayed black. The black paint is bubbling off in places and we wish
to restore it to a nice aluminium finish. Not neccesarily a shiny
finish, a matt one would be just fine; and probably easier.

Using wet and dry carborundum paper is going to be quite a big job to
get it looking good, especially around the detailed parts of it.

Is it possible to buy a small fairly inexpensive 'sand blaster' that
would do the job? Or even some kind of paint stripper, either of
which would not damage the aluminium surface?

Grateful for advice on how you might tackle this job.

Have to do this every day - (Aircraft engineer)

1. Remove paint. (paint stripper)
2. Remove worst of corrosion mechanically. (wet n dry and gentle fine wire
brush. NOT a brass one)
3. Kill corrosion - use Phosphoric acid (Jenolite). Wet for 5 min then wash
off with water. Dry thoroughly.
4. If you are going to paint it you can prep surface with something like
Alodine - it's a bit like anodising. (Not sure of how to get that other than
commercially)
5. Polish or repaint. If painting use "Self Etching Primer" for first coat.
6. For polishing Google "polishing aluminium".

Good Luck
Slatts