Thread: Polishing your machinery!

Joking right? Well silly as it sounds it does have some merrit. But before I continue an explanation by way of a short story.

Years ago I bought a house with a green ETSA box out-front, and of course all the little (and not so little) neighborhood darlings took great delight in tagging it. A couple of days after moving in, armed with a bottle of turps and a few rags, I set to work removing all the tags. A few days later the tags were back again, so once again armed with turps and a rag I removed them. But this time I noticed the tags were a lot easier to remove, obviously due to the nice clean semi shiny surface.

So after I removed the tags I polished the entire box with car polish. A few days later the graffiti was back of course and so out came the turps again. This time the tags came off with just a couple of wipes.

Why councils insist on using paint and brush to cover tags and graffiti is beyond me. About 99% of all tags and graffiti are applied with either aerosols or markers; both can be removed quite easily with turps, petrol or enamel thinners.

Whilst I’m sure no one on this forum tags or graffitis their own sheds, all sorts of goop: dust, off spray, oil, grease, etc, floats around inside workshops and settlles on our machinery. Time, temperature changes and a myriad of other things conspire to damage the surfaces of our machinery. But, if all the machinery in the shed was nice and clean and shiny; dirt, dust, etc, would be less likely to stick to it, or at least wouldn't stick so hard and fast, and it doesn’t take anywhere near as long to remove and clean up.

So you probably want to know what the inside of my shed looks like: sadly probably the same as yours, but there is hope, I bought a tin of polish this morning.

End note, it’s a well known fact: if graffiti is removed quickly it is less likely reappear, or at least - a little less frequently. In my case after removing the graffiti half a dozen times, the little darlings stopped tagging it altogether and switched their attention elsewhere. Unfortunately councils tend to paint over graffiti with house paint; which really doesn’t look a lot better than that which they seek to cover, and of course once house paint is applied you are stuck with that remedy.