Home › Work activities › Polish materials, workpieces, or finished products
O*NET detailed work activityPolish materials, workpieces, or finished products
Stays humanHands-on work
14 jobs16 tasks
This is physical, in-person work with real objects, tools, equipment and places that change from day to day. AI can't do it for you.
Part of Smooth surfaces of objects or equipment, under the O*NET work activity group Handling and Moving Objects. Individual tasks below can carry a different label when their own wording calls for it (0 AI-ready, 0 AI-assist, 16 stays human).
Tasks built on this activity
- Grind, sand, clean, or polish objects or parts to correct defects or to prepare surfaces for further finishing, using hand tools and power tools.
- Smooth soldered joints and rough spots, using hand files and emery paper, and polish smoothed areas with polishing wheels or buffing wire.
- Set dials and start machines to polish lenses or hold lenses against rotating wheels to polish them manually.
- Polish artificial limbs, braces, or supports, using grinding and buffing wheels.
- Remove excess metal or porcelain and polish surfaces of prostheses or frameworks, using polishing machines.
- Smooth and polish flat and contoured surfaces of parts or tools, using scrapers, abrasive stones, files, emery cloths, or power grinders.
- Prepare workpieces for etching or engraving by cutting, sanding, cleaning, polishing, or treating them with wax, acid resist, lime, etching powder, or light-sensitive enamel.
- Place stones in clamps on polishing machines and polish facets of stones, using felt-covered or canvas-covered polishing wheels and polishing compounds such as tripoli and rouge.
- Buff and wax the finished paintwork.
- Remove scratches and polish roll surfaces, using polishing stones and electric buffers.
- Clean, treat, buff, or polish finished items, using grinders, brushes, chisels, and cleaning solutions and polishing materials.
- Smooth surfaces of carvings, using rubbing stones.
- Refinish and polish piano cabinets or cases to prepare them for sale.