Cleaning the fence, polish, white diamond

[fiddlebick]

I've had my 2005 Bennington since 2013, and I've always hated the way the paint looked weathered on the fence panels. I keep this boat in top shape in every way I know how, but it came to me with oxidation and stained looking paint...not horrible, but definitely visible. It was kept in a slip every summer by the previous owner, and barn kept since I've owned it, so the damage is from rain water and oxidation common to pontoon boats. This year I decided to try to restore the paint, so a local body shop recommended 3M perfect-it compound on a buffer. That was a failure for me. It went on fine, but was a bear to get off and did'nt perform well for my needs. So I'm youtubing and I find a video using a product to clean a pontoon fence. White Diamond metal polish! BAM! Put it on with a variable speed buffer using a fine foam pad, and it completely removed all the oxidation and my fencing looks 100 percent better. I recommend it to anyone with a pontoon that needs a good cleaning of the fencing. The downside is, the buffer sling a bit of the product, so if your in a shop as I was, I put down cardboard under my work area to keep any flecks of the the floor. I easily cleaned up the amount that ended up on the topside of the boat, it got some on the helm and the tops of the seatbacks. To see this product just do a search on Youtube. Enter the phrase, "White Diamond Pontoon" and you'll find a man cleaning up an 8yr old Bennington. Thats what sold me, and as I said, I couldn't be happier with the outcome. I am not giving a bad review to the 3M compound, I'm know they have excellent products used by detail and body shops nationwide, and I am not an expert in detailing, so it's likely that my lack of experience caused my poor results with their product. The white diamond polish can be found at Autozone for 16 dollars.

[Bamaman]

I too have been using White Diamond for years, however it's really a metal polish that is intended to polish aluminum toons. Your fencing is painted aluminum.

It's really a grit suspended in a liquid, and it's intended to be applied with a wool bonnet and a dual action polisher/sander. After about 90 seconds, the liquid suddenly dries up and the grit does the polishing just before it dries and mostly disappears into the air.

You really should consider going to another automotive polishing product for fencing as the chances are it'll take too much paint off if used regularly. Note: Many owners mistakenly use Magic Erasers and Awesome (yellow liquid) which both contain microabrasives to clean surfaces. They take off paint layers too.

And don't use any polish or abrasive cleaner on the 1 1/4 inch anodized square tubing. The anodizing is a plating of sorts, and it's best left alone.