Buffing Wheels

[olyen]

gentlemen i am having trouble with buffing my guitar to a high gloss ,i am using a small wheel that i bought at home D, and the white compoundat 1750 rpm on my drill press ,of course after wet sanding to a 1500grit, then i use the swirl remover or something like thaqt polish on my drill with a home made foam pad i get pretty good results but not quite the one i would like,i wonder if there is a big difference between the big buffing wheels and these small ones in terms of a better gloss finish,or can i achieve the same results with the small one? thanks for any advice.

[Mattia]

Make sure you've sanded well enough, and then practice buffing. You can get perfectly great results with a drill-press mounted flap wheel, or even foam polishing pads.

[olyen]

thanks mattia, just one question,a flap wheel ,what exactly is that ,is that the same cotton wheels i am using? ,i have one that is a little stiff ,and another one is more like a flexible flanel,and thanks for the advice.

[Mattia]

I meant the cotton type thingy. I'm no expert on buffing wheel materials, though; I'm using foam polishing pads for now, and they do the trick for me.

[erikbojerik]

From the very beginning, make absolutely sure that you don't use two different buffing compounds on the same wheel. They can often have different grit sizes, and what will happen is that you'll create a nice shiny surface (from the fine-sized grit) that has lots of very thin scratches visible in it (from the coarser-sized grit).

If you've already done this, throw it away and keep a separate pad/wheel for each grit size. And be really **** about keeping them clean and not getting any dust on them.

[olyen]

[makes a lot of sense, and yeah i havent been that careful with the wheels,and also i did use more than one compound on it, i actually used rubbing compound no7

something i guess it s not sauppossed to be used with nitro, i just didnt know better, it wasnt really abrasive on the finish, and i guess i thought this would be my course grit and then i moved to the fine white compound on the same wheel though, oh well i guess i know for my next guitar, thanks a lot for the help,

PS i forgot,i talked to a friend( person) that builds yesterday and he claimed that there is no way of getting a good finish out of those little wheels anyway its gotta be tha real stuff,what do you say, i know someone told me here already i can and i kind of feel that way too ,i dont know thoughts anyone?