What Type Of Polishing Machine Do You Guys Use? A Dremel Or Bench Grinder Polishing Machine? And Why After I Polish, It Becomes Blurry?

[number98]

Hi, i recently bought a dremel machine and dialux green color compound. But why after i polish, the surface becomes blurry? I was wondering is it because I'm using dremel? And is there anyway way to fix? Thanks a lot.

Edited June 22, 2015 by number98

[Geo]

I prefer to polish by hand, it keeps edges nice and sharp, but takes a lot longer.

Just curious, what metal are you polishing?

[number98]

I prefer to polish by hand, it keeps edges nice and sharp, but takes a lot longer.

Just curious, what metal are you polishing?

Just normal 316 stainless steel. Oh. May i know what type of compound you use? 

[Blacklab]

A lot of the compounds leave a waxy film & normally require further hand polishing to remove the residue. On stainless steel I use a Dremel with hard felt mop & blue colour final finishing compound, finishing off with a pink colour Selvyt silver cloth. The hard felt mop used carefully will keep the edges sharp. On silver I just use the Selvyt silver cloth & on gold & gold plate I use a bugundy colour Selvyt gold cloth

[Ishima]

your motor probably isn't the problem, green dialux is fantastic but keep in mind, like all compounds, it produces different results depending on what wheel you're applying it with, as well as how you're going about it.

in polishing steel I'll generally stick to chamois and fluffy cotton mops, the chamois is a little firmer, it will take out light to moderate surface damage (depending on how persistent you are and hot you run the piece.) and finish up steel to usually a cloudy mirror, sometimes a good mirror, but usually some way cloudy or imperfect.  

So I have to switch out to the softer cotton, which needs to be run a good deal faster than the chamois (make no mistake it firms up with speed, so fair warning, it will take off skin if you're careless) But it's softness means it can be used as a final finish with the same compound, taking out the cloudiness and imperfections of the previous stage of polishing. 

For greater damage i stock felt and grey dialux, but you have to be careful with this, especially if it's a mini mop like it is for me, and not a bench motor, it goes either way but especially when you can only work on a small area with a mini mop, a mop as hard as felt can very easily distort a piece, leaving dents and ridges that the light reflecting in it warps around and betrays your mistake. 

I advise you work backwards, learn how to get a really good final finish, and progressively learn to take out more and more damage without putting your own damage in and still being able to get that same final finish. It's better to lean on and potentially misuse compounds/mops/techniques that are too gentle than to lean on and potentially misuse things that are too harsh. 

Edited June 22, 2015 by Ishima

[number98]

your motor probably isn't the problem, green dialux is fantastic but keep in mind, like all compounds, it produces different results depending on what wheel you're applying it with, as well as how you're going about it.

in polishing steel I'll generally stick to chamois and fluffy cotton mops, the chamois is a little firmer, it will take out light to moderate surface damage (depending on how persistent you are and hot you run the piece.) and finish up steel to usually a cloudy mirror, sometimes a good mirror, but usually some way cloudy or imperfect.

So I have to switch out to the softer cotton, which needs to be run a good deal faster than the chamois (make no mistake it firms up with speed, so fair warning, it will take off skin if you're careless) But it's softness means it can be used as a final finish with the same compound, taking out the cloudiness and imperfections of the previous stage of polishing.

For greater damage i stock felt and grey dialux, but you have to be careful with this, especially if it's a mini mop like it is for me, and not a bench motor, it goes either way but especially when you can only work on a small area with a mini mop, a mop as hard as felt can very easily distort a piece, leaving dents and ridges that the light reflecting in it warps around and betrays your mistake.

I advise you work backwards, learn how to get a really good final finish, and progressively learn to take out more and more damage without putting your own damage in and still being able to get that same final finish. It's better to lean on and potentially misuse compounds/mops/techniques that are too gentle than to lean on and potentially misuse things that are too harsh.

Hello ishima, thank you for your reply. So after you've switched to a fluffy soft Cotten mop, do you put any compound or you don't? And normally how much compound do you "load" the wheel both the chamois leather and fluffy Cotten mop? I heard somewhere that loading the wheel with too much compound causes the surface to blur too right? I've been using the stock felt mop that came along with the dremel when I bought it. But whenever i polish, it caused the surface to turn blurry despite having literally all the scratches removed. Thanks.

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[Ishima]

Good questions, the rule of thumb for loading or charging wheels is 'little and often' so usually i stop charging almost as soon as i see the wheel start to turn a little green with the new compound and then after a few passes re charge the wheel, basically this is because polishing and buffing happens when both the compound, and the fibres of the wheel are able to contact the piece, charge a wheel too much and those fibres wont reach the piece, they'll be stuck behind a thick layer of compound.

I do charge my cotton wheel as well, but it's a good idea to have a a 'clean' cotton wheel as well in case you're running into problems in final finishing/cleaning, this is a wheel you don't charge but just use to remove used compound off of the surface of what you're polishing. This is because, sometimes trying to clean off residue can leave marks, usually I find it doesn't, i'll usually clean a piece of with with wet wipes or some spirit (isopropyl alcohol) and tissue/toothbrush and that's usually fine but strictly speaking it's not the way to do it, and on occasion it has left marks. If we were using a bench motor with a large cotton wheel you'd charge one side of it, and move the piece from the charged side to the uncharged side, doing the final polish and cleaning the piece of residue in one motion, but on mini mop that isn't practicable, hence keeping a spare, uncharged cotton mop. 

You'll probably need to get a lot of practice in, I found learning refinishing polishing to be immensely frustrating because the people who could do it didn't seem to know how to explain it or would leave key details out, so most of my learning was trial, error and me trying to work out the theory myself, I just hope I've helped you avoid that experience somewhat. 

There's this video that get's posted in every thread like this, because it's one of the best videos to explain refurbishing/refinishing, it covers a lot of the stuff I've mentioned, it's about polishing with a bench motor but a lot of it is transferable to hand held motors.

  Edited June 25, 2015 by Ishima

[number98]

Good questions, the rule of thumb for loading or charging wheels is 'little and often' so usually i stop charging almost as soon as i see the wheel start to turn a little green with the new compound and then after a few passes re charge the wheel, basically this is because polishing and buffing happens when both the compound, and the fibres of the wheel are able to contact the piece, charge a wheel too much and those fibres wont reach the piece, they'll be stuck behind a thick layer of compound.

I do charge my cotton wheel as well, but it's a good idea to have a a 'clean' cotton wheel as well in case you're running into problems in final finishing/cleaning, this is a wheel you don't charge but just use to remove used compound off of the surface of what you're polishing. This is because, sometimes trying to clean off residue can leave marks, usually I find it doesn't, i'll usually clean a piece of with with wet wipes or some spirit (isopropyl alcohol) and tissue/toothbrush and that's usually fine but strictly speaking it's not the way to do it, and on occasion it has left marks. If we were using a bench motor with a large cotton wheel you'd charge one side of it, and move the piece from the charged side to the uncharged side, doing the final polish and cleaning the piece of residue in one motion, but on mini mop that isn't practicable, hence keeping a spare, uncharged cotton mop.

You'll probably need to get a lot of practice in, I found learning refinishing polishing to be immensely frustrating because the people who could do it didn't seem to know how to explain it or would leave key details out, so most of my learning was trial, error and me trying to work out the theory myself, I just hope I've helped you avoid that experience somewhat.

There's this video that get's posted in every thread like this, because it's one of the best videos to explain refurbishing/refinishing, it covers a lot of the stuff I've mentioned, it's about polishing with a bench motor but a lot of it is transferable to hand held motors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMuWrI-sCj8

Hello ishima thank you for your reply! I just bought two chamois leather mop mounted and two fluffy cotton mop mounted from cousinsuk! Yeah. The video you've attached is one of the best video regarding about polishing I've ever seen. I didn't know buffing could remove such a deep dent/scratches. I thought it was not possible. As I normally used sandpaper to sand the dent/deep scratches! Really thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question :)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[number98]

Good questions, the rule of thumb for loading or charging wheels is 'little and often' so usually i stop charging almost as soon as i see the wheel start to turn a little green with the new compound and then after a few passes re charge the wheel, basically this is because polishing and buffing happens when both the compound, and the fibres of the wheel are able to contact the piece, charge a wheel too much and those fibres wont reach the piece, they'll be stuck behind a thick layer of compound.

I do charge my cotton wheel as well, but it's a good idea to have a a 'clean' cotton wheel as well in case you're running into problems in final finishing/cleaning, this is a wheel you don't charge but just use to remove used compound off of the surface of what you're polishing. This is because, sometimes trying to clean off residue can leave marks, usually I find it doesn't, i'll usually clean a piece of with with wet wipes or some spirit (isopropyl alcohol) and tissue/toothbrush and that's usually fine but strictly speaking it's not the way to do it, and on occasion it has left marks. If we were using a bench motor with a large cotton wheel you'd charge one side of it, and move the piece from the charged side to the uncharged side, doing the final polish and cleaning the piece of residue in one motion, but on mini mop that isn't practicable, hence keeping a spare, uncharged cotton mop.

You'll probably need to get a lot of practice in, I found learning refinishing polishing to be immensely frustrating because the people who could do it didn't seem to know how to explain it or would leave key details out, so most of my learning was trial, error and me trying to work out the theory myself, I just hope I've helped you avoid that experience somewhat.

There's this video that get's posted in every thread like this, because it's one of the best videos to explain refurbishing/refinishing, it covers a lot of the stuff I've mentioned, it's about polishing with a bench motor but a lot of it is transferable to hand held motors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMuWrI-sCj8

Hello ishima thank you for your reply! I just bought two chamois leather mop mounted and two fluffy cotton mop mounted from cousinsuk! Yeah. The video you've attached is one of the best video regarding about polishing I've ever seen. I didn't know buffing could remove such a deep dent/scratches. I thought it was not possible. As I normally used sandpaper to sand the dent/deep scratches! Really thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question :)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Lawson]

The JoolTool is worth a look.

 

Here's a post on the machine:

http://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/1861-the-next-generation-poilishing-machine-jooltool

[bsshog40]

I just use my dremel with red compound. I buff with that and finish buff with a clean wheel. Works ok for me.

[MrBeat]

If you are getting blurry/foggy end result after any compound it means it is ready for a wash. Always thoroughly clean parts after each buff or polish in a degreaser ( fairly liquid will suffice if you have no chrono clean or related cleaners ). The compounds are binded using oils so the film they leave needs to be removed. It really is crucial to clean between each stage, the best results come from patience and knowing your compounds. Just to note there is a big difference between polishing and buffing, they are not one and the same and require different techniques. I could write a book on it but i have nee the time :)

 

Im much like Geo, i prefer hand polishing using traditional techniques with various oils, woods, burnishers, and fine powders, the results are far superior ( Geo knows what i mean ;) )

[Geo]

( Geo knows what i mean ;) )

That I do Mr Beat. :)

[steven]

Just finished polishing these watches for a customer last week.

Sorry, the photo is not clear as I took it just for my record.

[steven]

Firstly, I use the white compound on the cotton wheel to polish off scratches. There will be swirls left on the surface at this stage.

Then, I use the little felt wheel applied with some 5.0 micron diamond paste to polish off the swirls. But the surface is still a little blurry at this stage.

Now I'll applied some 3.0 micron diamond paste on a new felt bob and buff the surface to near mirror finished.

Final buffing by hand using Cape Cod metal polish to get the sparkling mirror finished. I can see my reflection [emoji2] grinning ear to ear, and sometimes my wife's too as I always showed her the end results.