Beginner questions re: buffing.

Reflection and scatter. When you buff in one direction, you get ridges in the surface which reflect more as you look along them and scatter more when you look across them. That's why random orbit buffers are nice, they sort of mix things up from all directions. Same with sanding of course, though the ridges are deeper because they're made with larger particles.

Use the chamois and rouge as the butler did for best look.

Speed doesn't make a lot of difference. Since you're dragging grit past at a higher rate with higher speed, you can scratch away more in the same time, but material removal is not really the objective of buffing.

Cloth wheels will put out lint and get rouge airborne, so use a dust mask. Not sure how hard/long you're buffing to notice a loss in diameter. Normally you use coarser to finer in stages rather than start with finest and buff longer. Use one wheel for Tripoli and one for rouge. With two ends on my buffer, I put one on each end, tacking off before I go to the rouge. I then randomize the direction as much as possible to get an even scatter.

I use a soft felt buffing wheel on a shaft for fine buffing. The wheels should be marked and kept in a separate zip bag to prevent contamination with a rougher compound. After using one compound, wash the piece well with detergent and a soft brush to remove residual compound before starting with a finer compound.

I never saw green rouge. Are you sure this is not chromium oxide or some other fast cutting compound?

The faster the speed, the faster the cut, and more heat generated.

You might get better answers on a jewelry making or metal working newsgroup as this is mainly for wood turning. Buffing wood is a little different from buffing metal.

Good luck.

I've been doing a lot of buffing lately, and I found that this is a matter of spinning the wheel way too fast.

Most of my buffing is done by putting cloth wheels on an arbor and putting them in a drill chuck on my lathe. I then spin them at 3600 RPM. When I tried to make this a little more mobile by putting a buffing wheel on my angle grinder (which spins a lot faster) it did exactly what you describe. The downside, aside from the obvious mess from the lint, is that the buffing grit flies off almost immediately, and it doesn't work nearly as well. Better to keep those RPMs lower- not so slow that you can't get the job done, but slow enough to keep the wheel from flying apart.

IIRC, the traditional way to do this is to mount the buffing wheels on a standard bench grinder, and remove the guards. It also helps if the grinder has long arbors on it, so you can get oddly-shaped pieces in there.

I haven't found that, particularly. You could be right, but I would actually assume the opposite is true. High speed = better finish and more material removal as a general rule. It's with your more aggressive grits that you probably want to slow it down to make sure you don't buff away material you'd rather keep.

To be honest, I haven't even opened the tube yet, but I have a green tube of rouge that is specifically for stainless steel. I would assume that this is what he's referring to.

On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:16:44 -0500, Prometheus wrotd:

Yes, The shops here mostly carry white and green compound only. Respectively they are supposed to be for medium and fine stainless steel polishing.

I just found this chart:

No. Heat doesn't come from removing material, it comes from rubbing against what's there.

This bit of misinformation keeps getting repeated all the time, but if you reduce the pressure of one item against another while grinding, sanding or buffing, you will reduce the amount of heat.

That's why your 15,000 rpm orbital sander says not to press or you'll melt the velcro.

I didn't say removing the material generated the heat. Just that a faster wheel generates more heat, all else being equal.

Might want to tell the Physics types about your discovery.