It is time to help the Grandson again this year which means I'll probably enter a car into the Family member division to channel some of the ideas I have instead of making his car for him.
One thing that has gotten old for him and me (HIS FOURTH, MY 6th)car is polishing the nails they give you for axles. Time consuming and kind of boring. I chuck them up in a slow running drill and then sand them with progressively finer strips of sandpaper - usually 220, 400, 600, then some polishing paper scraps I got from work long ago for polishing fiber optic connector ends. Probably 1000 to 4000 grit. The idea is a smoother axle allows the wheels to run with less friction. Times are decided with .001 ms resolution so yeah every bit counts.
This year I decided to try for me some prepolished axles they sell on Amazon and the internet claimed to be.
The commercial axles are rounder and they have a groove so that the wheel runs with less contact area.
But overall, from three different seller, none of them had as good a polish as mine.
The picture shows on the left side, the stock BSA (boy scouts) axle, the stock axle I polished,
and on the right, three axles costing $2 per axle.

Its hard to light highly polished round surfaces, but you can see the roughness in the reflective area how smooth and uniform the light reflection is.
One thing that has gotten old for him and me (HIS FOURTH, MY 6th)car is polishing the nails they give you for axles. Time consuming and kind of boring. I chuck them up in a slow running drill and then sand them with progressively finer strips of sandpaper - usually 220, 400, 600, then some polishing paper scraps I got from work long ago for polishing fiber optic connector ends. Probably 1000 to 4000 grit. The idea is a smoother axle allows the wheels to run with less friction. Times are decided with .001 ms resolution so yeah every bit counts.
This year I decided to try for me some prepolished axles they sell on Amazon and the internet claimed to be.
The commercial axles are rounder and they have a groove so that the wheel runs with less contact area.
But overall, from three different seller, none of them had as good a polish as mine.
The picture shows on the left side, the stock BSA (boy scouts) axle, the stock axle I polished,
and on the right, three axles costing $2 per axle.
Its hard to light highly polished round surfaces, but you can see the roughness in the reflective area how smooth and uniform the light reflection is.
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