Polishing up a light coloured shank with a metal band

[tritrek]

No, not polishing with a metal band, altough that must be fun too

I mean, how can I polish a light stained shank, that has a brass/alu/etc ringed mouthpiece attached to it? It always messes my pipes up because the polishing wheel gets black from the metals and transfers the "blackness" back to the light shank...
On the other hand, if I remove the mouthpiece while polishing the shank, the end where they meet will be rounded and will have a groove when I attach the mouthpiece. I'm puzzled...

I was thinking about making a "dummy" mouthpiece to it... but again, I am making it mostly when restoring pipes, so they are all different shanks, tenons, mouthpieces so I'd go crazy if I wanted to make a new faux stem to each and every..

How do you solve such a problem? Thank for your suggestions!

[caskwith]

I put a peice of tape around the shank and polish the band with a separate buff just for metals. Then i do the reverse when polishing the shank. Sometimes afterwards I need to give them a very light going over together but not hard enough to make the buff black.

[tritrek]

I put a peice of tape around the shank and polish the band with a separate buff just for metals. Then i do the reverse when polishing the shank. Sometimes afterwards I need to give them a very light going over together but not hard enough to make the buff black.

Thanks Chris, that's what I do now as a workaround I just thought there's a >secret< way to do it only I don't know about

[Sasquatch]

There is, but it's.... secret.

[linearone]

I've been looking for a more elegant solution to this problem myself. I have been taping but its not fool proof. After 320 grit on the whole pipe and metal shank extension I was considering going up to a very high grit like lets say 1000-1500, and then taping and buffing. Aluminum cuts so fast, even with tripoli that it melts grooves unless you are turning at a VERY slow speed.

Any tips and advice for aluminum shank caps/extensions?