Polishing Can be a Dirty Job

Dear Fellow Inventors,

Two weekends ago Elliot and I measured unpolished aluminum panels in our cooker and found that they were far less effective than aluminum foil panels.  We decided that we had to construct fully polished and correctly cut panels, both to measure them absolutely and to compare them to foil.

We found that polishing is rather difficult work.  There are videos on YouTube that show you how to do it, but a fundamental secret is that you need to the most powerful polishing tool you can get.  We bought one for about $200, a huge, heavy, dangerously powerful Hitachi tool pictured below.  Using this, I was able to polish all 4 panels in about 6 hours.  It is, however, a dirty, boring and time-consuming job.

The final result is a mirror-like, but not quite mirror-quality, reflective surface.  We hope to test the new oven with these panels soon, and I am optimistic we will have better performance than ever before.