Propeller Cleaning / Polishing

[Knotallthere]

Hi,

Our 356 was used in salt water but will now be sailed on Lake Ontario. I would like to replace the prop but it isn't the cards this off season, however I would like to clean and possibly polish up the OEM two blade in the attached photo. My question is would I see any improvement in doing so? If anything I thought by removing the old growth and polishing; it would make a difference in its efficiency? Is this true?? Is there any other benefit in this exercise? Would it also keep the pitch closer to org. spec by removing the build up?

 

[Tom J]

Well worth cleaning up the prop. Better efficiency and probably less vibration. Don't take off any of the original material, though. The shape of the blade is critical to that improved efficiency.

 

[Knotallthere]

Thanks Tom J! Any recommendations on products? I was going to take down / scrape off the heavy build up and use autosol metal polish applied by hand to buff.

 

[Terry Cox]

Our 1991 boat has been kept in salt water ever since new. We purchased her in 2002 and since then haul her every six to seven years to redo the bottom with ablative paint. At that time I clean and polish the prop and prop shaft with a scrubber pad, then apply two liberal coats of zinc oxide ointment (Desitin).

Each year between bottom paints I have a diver scrape mussels off the keel, and remove any barnacles from the bright work (prop, prop shaft, etc.). When finished our fixed three blade looks like new with no pits or blemishes.

 

[Bob 04 H260]

Our boat is in saltwater for 5 months of the year. We have a stainless prop. We get some buildup on it because of the warm water. I find using a wire brush in my rechargeable drill removes everything easily. It looks like new.
Good luck, Bob

 

[seadaddler]

When ever I haul for bottom job I use a wire brush
on my portable drill and it will look like new and
perform so much better and also dive on it to clean
once a 2 months

 

[walmsleyc]

I've just recently cleaned up my Gori folding prop. I started with a soak in CLR to dissolve and breakup some of the surface accumulation from growth. Used a scrubbie to help get the junk off of the surface. I then dissembled the parts and buffed it on a felt wheel with some polishing compound. It now gleams like the day it came out of the box and made a 7 year old prop look like new. It really didn't take long either.

Chris

 

[Knotallthere]

Thanks everyone for talking the time to send a reply, all great ideas! I will steal a combination of the suggestions and get to work!

 

[OffDuty]

I'm presently on the Great Lakes in fresh water so the prop isn't as bad but I did a post on my blog regarding cleaning/polishing the prop. Hopefully there is something of value to be found.
Dave

http://www.sailingoffduty.com/going-for-the-bronze/

 

[Dan_Y]

If you get a chance, pop the prop off and send it to a propeller shop for balancing and polishing at least once. We did that to our '91 15" 2-blade that had been kept in salt water for the last 16 years. Between balancing the prop and truing the shaft, there was a very noticeable reduction in vibration.

 

[Knotallthere]

Thanks everyone for the great ideas. I'm going to pull the prop, soak it CLR and buff and see what happens, stealing walmsleyc's suggestion!

Thanks again,