Hi, just joined up, and need some advice with Aluminium.

I have just built a 2.5m long island bar for our new kitchen, it comprises 3x 800mm wide banks of pot drawers joined together, and it has been mounted on 6x 125mm castors so we can move it if we ever need to.

I will be cladding the 2 ends and the back of the cabinet with Colorbond Mini Orb, and then i will rivet or screw 40x25x3.0 aluminium angle to the 4 corners of the cabinet to give it an industrial look.

I bought a 2.4m x 1.2m x 3.0mm thick sheet of Aluminium (mill finish) which i will be cutting into pieces to form the 12 drawer fronts, which i will screw onto the front of each drawer using small tech screws which are color matched to the Mini Orb color (Jasper)

Before i fit the 4 external angles and the drawer fronts i will be sanding the surface of the shiny Aluminium using 120grit glass paper in a circular motion which gives it a dull etched industrial look, and usually i would leave it like that on any other project i have done before, but on this project i would like to apply some kind of sealer or whatever that may protect the Aluminium so it is easy to clean (greasy finger marks etc) an also to prevent the aluminium from possible oxidation, or discoloring or going really dull in appearance.

Is there a product out there that i can buy to wipe onto the aluminium, or should i just leave the aluminium as it is after sanding it.

Naturally all cut edges will be filed and sanded with fine glass paper so they are curved and smoothed off, and all corners will be slightly rounded as well so nobody injures themselves while using the drawers.

The 2.5m x 900mm benchtop arrives next week, so i will post up a photo of the finished job in a few weeks time if anyone is interested.

Just a final note, i am a retired builder/joiner and i generally hate working with metal/steel, but i discovered Aluminium 2 years ago after i made a rocking horse for family friend, and i got hooked, and find myself now looking for any excuse to make things from this amazing metal, and i am going to introduce a lot more aluminium (and Mini Orb cladding) into our new townhouse in the next few months, just to give it a bit of an industrial feel.

Cheers


Read the full thread at metalworkforums.com...