Does anyone have any experience/tips/tricks on fixing polished aluminum serverware? We had a house party awhile ago and somehow my Lenox Stony Creek salad serving spoon and fork ended up in the dishwasher. I never noticed until I pulled them out last night to serve salad (we had my parents over for dinner) and saw that they appeared to have what I think of as hard water spots and marks all over them. Basically whiteish drips, lines, whatever all over the surface. The material for these things is supposed to be polished aluminum and I'm 100% positive they are handwash only, so it's entirely my fault for not catching these in the dishwasher when we had our last dinner party. I tried some gentle scrubbing with a paper towel soaked in vinegar and it didn't seem to make a difference.
I've tried doing some googling but most of the time people describe their issues as oxidation - aluminum turning black/leaving black residue and needing to be polished. I seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum with whiteish marks that don't leave a residue or go away. I put in an alert at replacements.com in case the individual pieces come in stock so I can just replace them (currently showing as out of stock), but I'd like to try to fix what I have rather than buy new ones.