Is there a way to bring old dried up bricks of polishing compound back to life? I have some old bricks of emery polishing compound that dried out. Instead of smearing onto the buffing wheel, they just crumble and flake apart. Can I soak them in grease or oil or something, or should I just chuck 'em and get some new ones? For a 3600 rpm buffing motor, is a 6" diameter buffing wheel the max you should use? Is it okay to use an 8" buffing wheel as long as the motor can handle it?, or does the surface of the wheel spin too fast and throw the compound off? What's the secret to using a "sisal" wheel. I'm trying to use a 6" sisal wheel to hopefully cut stainless faster than my usual spiral sewn flannel wheel, but the surface of the wheel is so rough that it just seems to throw compound back off instead of load up with it. Do you have to use a different type of compound with sisal? A guy who sells polishing stuff at a swap meet told me you should barely touch the part to the buffing wheel "and let the compound do the work". This has always bugged me, because lightly touching the part to the work seems to do hardly anything, and pushing fairly hard into it seems to make good progress. Is this guy full of crap, or am I not loading up my buffing wheel correctly or something? I'm always thinking about this when I'm spending hours buffing, and I know I'm probably doing something wrong. I do scrape the buffing wheel pretty often with an old hacksaw blade, and apply new buffing compound. Maybe I'm just not smearing enough of the compound on, or the compound is too dry to stay on like it should? Buffing is really an art, and I'd love to hear any comments from people who know what they're doing so I could try to get better at it. I have learned from reading other posts on this subject, but these are questions that I've always wondered about. I've been buffing parts here and there for about 35 years, but never quite felt like I really knew what I was doing. It's always sort of a trial and error type of thing. Thanks.
I keep my bricks in freezer bags with a little water.(room temp) You can bring back some compounds with the same trick. Compounds like moisture. I know there is a good aplication for the sisal wheel...I just haven't found it yet. The trick is always have good pressure on the wheel....WITH control. If the stainless you are polishing is trim..you still need to push it into the wheel. But if you don't have control it will wad up on the floor in a blink. Unfortunately the only way to learn when you are on the edge of control is by failing. When I was doing a lot of large item polishing I had a 800 lb polisher. 15 horse 3 phase motor. 2 14 inch, 4 inch wide wheels 5 feet apart. I ran it up to 5500 rpm for the alum work. You would be amazed just how fast a chunk of metal can hit the floor from waist level. Gary
Dunno if this means anything, but I have a box of four types of buffing compound purchased at Sears about 20 years ago. Still working on the first box and it's doing ok. No special storage tricks, just leave em on the shelf where the buffer sits.
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