Polishing By Hand

[ultrazone5150]

Hey guys, I plan on buying a stew mac buffing pad that mounts on a drill, but for now im finishing a project. and want to buff it by hand. Is a 100% cotton t shirt sleeve appropriate?? Ive heard to not apply the polish to the guitar, but to the cloth. How much should be applied, and what rubbing techniques should be used? THANKS

[Arseneau]

I second that question. I, too, would like to know the ins and outs of polishing by hand.

[thegarehanman]

You can get a hand buffed finish to look almost,if not equally, as good as a machine buffed finish. I did it on my first guitar. You use the same technique as far as using progressively finer grits. The only difference is you spend about 3 times as much time buffing and your arm is much more muscular afterwards. I use a machine now though; I like to let my muscles atrophy once and a while.

[Clem]

Hey even if you had the buff pads you would still have to buff the inside of the horns by hand so practice up because it does consume time. One tip for the foam pad is to put it on your drill press instead of a hand drill. You can adjust the RPM's and the result is above the hand drill by far.

[gripper]

If you buy 3M compound the bottle will have a "cutting" chart with a rating for each grit/compound. I just used a general purpose new-finish machine compound on an old tee shirt for about 20 minutes and switched to some real low rated buffing/swirl stuff. I found that the fresh compound did not leave as nice a shine as dirty compound that had been on the rag for a while. 3 hours later, shiny guitar, sore fingers. The cutaways are hard on the fingers. Stay off the edge corners. They seem to take care of themselves. Glossy guitars rock! Do yourself a favor and don't spend too much time on the back/center. You are going to scratch the crap out of it anyhow. No need to feel bad about it.

[Mattia]

Old cotton T is fine, apply small amounts as per instructions on polish of choice, and have at it. I find moderate to strong pressure and a fairly fast circular motion is what does the trick best.

Re: stewmac's foam pads, if you're really careful, you can get into all sorts of funny cornerns, including the majority of the the inside of various horns. Even with a set neck in the way. But you do have to be careful.

Also, while a small flap wheel in a drill press makes sense (but you HAVE TO anchor that sucker, and anchor it WELL), less so with foam pads. And I don't know about you, but my hand drill press is variable speed, and has a pressure sensitive trigger, and it's just a fairly cheap Black and Decker.