Need Polishing Pad Lessons

[dchristian]

I need a short lesson on posishing pads. I know a wool Pad is the fastest cutting but when it comes to foam pads I am a little confused. Some are white,some orange some black. Some are flat some are waffled. What determines when to use a particular pad? Does the color signify anything?

[88GT]

I use a white twisted wool and a black foam waffle pad both from 3M. I tried saving a few bucks once and bought a (I wanna say Norton) white pad and it was off ballance and chucked it. I have a white foam 7" pad for my DA sander for black cars to finish up with.

[Len]

I need a short lesson on posishing pads. I know a wool Pad is the fastest cutting but when it comes to foam pads I am a little confused. Some are white,some orange some black. Some are flat some are waffled. What determines when to use a particular pad? Does the color signify anything?

As far as fiber the Electrified Sheep Skin is the fastest cutting that I've found then comes twisted wool. As far as foam is concerned the harder to foam the faster it cuts. The Sure Finish Orange Foam Pad is pretty hard and is one of the faster cutting foam pads while the white is softer and cut slower and the black is the softest and cuts slowest. A pad that cuts faster leaves deeper swirl marks than one that cuts slower.

We sand most of our new paint jobs using 1500 Trizact then we go over it with 3000 grit Trizact then we polish it using an orange foam pad. This makes it fast, painless and very high quality. I also like the Orange Pad because it's 6" and not 8", this causes the edge of the pad to be traveling at a slower speed than the 8" or 9" pads so the chance of hurting anything is much less.

3M products are decent but are kind of middle of the road compared to Sure Finish products. The good thing about 3M products is that they are available everywhere but if you're looking for higher quality there are a lot of other choices.

Electrified Sheep Skin LINK


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[Polish Painter]

Len , Will the 6.5 inch orange foam pad adhere to my 9227 Makita buffer using the velcro pad that came with the buffer ? Do I need to buy the backing plate ?

[Len]

Len , Will the 6.5 inch orange foam pad adhere to my 9227 Makita buffer using the velcro pad that came with the buffer ? Do I need to buy the backing plate ?

The backing plate that came with the buffer is normally for wool pads and it's a little too big for the Sure Finish pads. You can try it but I'd recommend getting one of the SF backing plates.