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I'm trying to fix a repair gone awry. I noticed some scratches on my stainless steel range of unknown origin. Things like cookware never touch that part of the stove, and I never use abrasive cleaners on it, but I digress. I want them gone.

Did some research and most DIY guides and products say to apply a mild abrasive (scotch brite is common) with the grain until it buffs out. Bob Vila here said to use a microfiber cloth with barkeepers friend, which I had.

I followed his guide but (to my shock) it made it far worse! Here's the after. You can see the original scratches going up and down across the grain:

enter image description here

Yikes! What happened? What can I do?

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    To hide scratches you will need to create uniform scratches (scotch brite) or polish them completely out very tough to do in both cases.
    – Ed Beal
    Aug 7, 2017 at 16:24
  • Try diamond dust glass polishing compound. In comes in a mineral oil vehicle.
    – Jim Stewart
    Aug 7, 2017 at 17:25
  • Very thin scratches you could try to polish out with toothpaste but it will be time consuming.
    – Decapod
    Aug 7, 2017 at 21:27
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    try very fine sandpaper, like 800 grit or higher, use a sanding block and sand in one direction. That will give you a brushed look.
    – Kokako
    Aug 8, 2017 at 5:15

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I can't tell from the picture, but ideally, if you can remove that piece and work on it freely, here's what you can do:

  1. Use a scotch brite pad and uniformly create scratches (the trick is to always always go in the same direction). This pad here is commonly used to mimic #4 finish in stainless steel. You can also go to heavier / coarser pads.

enter image description here

  1. If you actually have gouges, and assuming you have access to an orbital sander, like this one (example), you would use a heavier grit pad to blend in all the scratches, then gradually go to a finer grit, 600 / 800 or so, to make all the scratches disappear. Then you can, if you want, put a grain on it again with the scotch brite pad.

enter image description hereenter image description here

  1. To finish it up, you can clean the stainless steel with stainless steel cleaner and polish.

    stainless steel cleaner and polish.

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