HOW TO: Thermoset Table Restoration


 
Cody Bratton said:
I’d give those a good 3-5 day bleach, Dawn and BKF, with a heavy concentration on the bleach to water.

One of these days I also want to throw a scoop of Oxy-Clean in too. What that does to grass stains in white baseball pants is incredible.
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I've thought about oxy clean too, but never seem to have any when it's time to soak parts.
 
I wish I knew how those SS tables are attached. I assume they’re glued down but a long soak makes me nervous that it could mess with the adhesive.
 
Cody Bratton said:
I wish I knew how those SS tables are attached. I assume they’re glued down but a long soak makes me nervous that it could mess with the adhesive.
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You still have to get the tables clean, and this is the best way I know how to do it.. I've never gone past overnight myself on a soak, scrubbing them every hour or so along the way. If the stainless inserts fall off, which I doubt would happen, no biggie. I would clean that up separately and hot glue it back on to the table.
 
I used Bruce's spray on 100% bleach method in a spray bottle, with Cody's recommendation of using a Scrub Daddy and was successful in cleaning mine.

Platinum C pic 31.jpg
 
I can almost guarantee those tables would come clean with the bleach spray on method. I hate those kind of tables however. They are not thermoset and Weber was crazy for using them on their upper end grills. They get dirty and smudges way too easily and they soak up grease like a sponge.

That being said, if you want to try soaking them, that is fine too. I would not worry about the SS inserts coming off. I have rehabbed about a dozen of these grills and never had any issue with that. As Steve mentioned, you could just glue them back on with Hot Glue or maybe even some RTV silicone.

This is an SS Platinum I did last week. I had more trouble with the scratched up SS.

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Samuel, I have not found any simple way. I suppose lots of elbow grease and BKF will eventually fix it. But, I don't claim to have any real tricks for that. If the SS wasn't surrounded by the table, I imagine you could get a polisher on it and really get a shine, but I would be afraid of damaging the surrounding table in that case.

@Josh Dekubber seems to have some crazy metal finishing skills, maybe he has some ideas.
 
I’ve fixed some light scratches, strictly experimentally. As I have a few pieces of SS that are essentially junk. The table inserts may pose more of a challenge though being they’re flush.
 
The other problem is the "grain" in the SS. If you want to retain that, any scrubbing will have to be in the same direction of the grain. But usually polishing will take the grain out and make it shiny.
 
Yeah those circular scratches would bug the heck out of me. Yeah you could sand them down with the finest of sandpaper to get rid of the grain and polish them out to a chrome-like look. If it was me I would tape off the plastic with duct tape so that it will stay. Can always get the residue off later. I would experiment and find a fine enough grit sandpaper to still leave a little bit of grain and I would sand them side to side with a block hand sander. This will be slow and meticulous as you have to be perfectly straight with your sanding but in the end you should get that factory look with new grain lines and fresh clean exposed SS.
 
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