Dont understand diffrent pads

B

biolchin12345

New member
Hi ive never used a pc before and im considering buying one. What i dont understand is the diffrence between all the pads. Can someone explain to me the diffrences and tell me what pads i would need to polish a car and mabye get some light scratching out.





Paul
 
I think of pads like sandpaper ... they come in different coarsenesses. For sandpaper, a coarser grit corrects scratches, but it leaves marring which needs to be removed by finer and finer grit paper until it's smooth enough for finish. Same with pads, you have course pads for correcting or cutting, then finer pads for polishing and finishing.
 
But how do y'all gauge the best combiantion of pad abrasiveness and the polish abrasiveness? And why wouldn't you just use a finishing pad and just up the polish abrasiveness till the swirl or other issue is corrected?



Howard
 
YankeeFan said:
But how do y'all gauge the best combiantion of pad abrasiveness and the polish abrasiveness?
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Experience and/or educated guesses based on what others have experienced. Sorry, I know that sorta Yoda-ish answer often sounds like less-than-helpful BSing but it's true.



And why wouldn't you just use a finishing pad and just up the polish abrasiveness till the swirl or other issue is corrected?
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To a great extent you *can* do that, although a finishing pad would seldom be a good choice because it's too "tight" porosity-wise and thus incompatible with "grainy" products. I do an awful lot of correction with polishing pads...often I'll use multiple passes with a compound/polishing pad combo instead of using the compound with a cutting pad. Back in the day (before there were so many pad choices), I'd use compounds, mild polishes, glazes, and LSPs, all with Cyclo's green polishing pads.



The opposite approach is popular with Optimum users- they use the Optimum polish with various grades of pads to effect the same sort of differences.



Both the pad and product contribute to the overall effect and as long as you avoid bad combos (e.g., aggressive compounds with finishing pads, fine polishes/glazes with aggressive cutting pads) there's a lot of room for personal preference. Just gotta find what works for you and what you like best.
 
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