Buffing Help

[87kevin]

Hi all,

I've been buffing my guitars with the stewmac foam pads and automotive compounds until now. I just set up a shopfox buffer with the 12" buffs and menzerma compounds (butterscotch med and ivory fine). The medium is taking off all the sanding marks no prob and leaving a uniform dull lustre like it should. Problem starts on the fine wheel. It actually seems to dull the finish, leaving a hazy residue and seems to introduce tons of new scratches. I can wipe off some of the residue, but all in all, it seems the fine compound dullens and scratches up the finish left by the medium compund? I'm sure I'm soing something wrong, but I dont really have any instructions... Any ideas?

[mammoth guitars]

Are you using different buffing wheels for each compound? The medium compound should start to show some gloss.

[87kevin]

Yep 2 wheels (one on each side) and only one stick per wheel. The medium seems to work great with a little gloss but the fine just mucks it up!

[erikbojerik]

Are you certain that you have absolutely NO cross-contamination between the two wheels, i.e. you didn't accidentally put some "medium" on the "fine" wheel?

If not, then you need to make sure you completely clean the medium grit off the guitar before moving to the fine wheel. It could be that the fine wheel is contaminated with dust/dirt from shipping, etc - so you could try to clean it up and try again.

After that, try to buff a little lighter so that the cotton doesn't dig in quite as much.

[87kevin]

hmmm. I did sort of rush through and not wipe down the body in between wheels. That is probably it - thanks erik. Do you wipe off with a clean cloth only or do you use naptha or something like it to get all the compound off?