Rotary Pads: Wool or Foam

Shaun Carollo

Shaun Carollo

Slave to Swirls
What do you prefer to use? What kind of situations may call for what type of pad? I'm just learning how to wheel and it seems like my one wool pad that I have leaves no swirls and my meguiars soft buff foam pad leaves a ton of swirl marks.

Thanks,
Shaun
 
Soft pad is more for waxing or sealing,not aggresive enough to remove swirls . I use both . Wool pad to remove flaws in paint followed by soft pad for sealing/waxing
 
Shaun,
I'm not a pro, but I've learned enough to know to be very careful with the wool pads, they are used for polishing, but if you don't have enough product on the wool, or you use too much pressure, you'll end up causing more swirls in the paint. There are foam pads that are available that are a bit coarser than the waxing pads and are made for polishing and are much safer to use than wool.
 
Foam pads are really not safer than wool pads. Foam pads generate more heat and do so quicker while wool pads usually run at a lower temp but cut or level paint faster.

Wool polishing pads many times leave a far better "swirl free" finish than foam pads unless it's a foam finishing pad. Wool pads are messy and don't last as long as foam but they do a great job in leveling and polishing.

If I wetsand a car I might be able to remove the sanding marks with my leveler and an LC orange pad but it's twice as fast with a LC wool cutting pad folowed by a wool polishing pad.

Anthony
 
I see SM Arnold makes foam pads with "cut outs" in them that claim to dissipate and reduce heat. I wonder if that really is true
 
Anthony Orosco said:
Foam pads are really not safer than wool pads. Foam pads generate more heat and do so quicker while wool pads usually run at a lower temp but cut or level paint faster.

Wool polishing pads many times leave a far better "swirl free" finish than foam pads unless it's a foam finishing pad. Wool pads are messy and don't last as long as foam but they do a great job in leveling and polishing.

If I wetsand a car I might be able to remove the sanding marks with my leveler and an LC orange pad but it's twice as fast with a LC wool cutting pad folowed by a wool polishing pad.

Anthony
Click to expand...

Also what many people don't realize, is there are different courseness of wool pads just like foam. Most places only stock the leveling pads, in synthetic and wool. I was digging through the buffing pad box at car quest a couple weeks ago and found a wool finishing pad, the strands were extremely soft and not twisted like many pads. I didn't buy it because I only use wool for heavy scratches/wetsanding but I might try it out.
 
Yeah, Car Quest seems to be source for decent buffing accessories, I only saw 9" diameter pads around here though :( I did see those vented foam pads there too, I wonder if they are rebadged SM Arnold pads.
 
I personally use the Edge 2000 Wool pads on my Rotary after wetsanding work, then use their foam pads for my final polishing. I seem to get good results from using both :D
 
Nick,
Which wool pads do you use? and with what products? ... I know Adam's :)
I just tried the Edge 2000 Yellow Wool with DACP and thought it worked pretty well. I hadn't used a blended pad before, but this pad didn't generate hardly any heat and didn't suck up the product like other Pure wool pads I have used in the past.
 
Kim,

Actually I haven't used the Adam's products with the wool pads, as I save them for my intermediate and final polishing steps. I have the black and gold E2k Wool pads for my Makita. I have used Meg's Compound Power (#84), 3M's Fine cut, PB SSR 2.5, Hi-temps Medium cut (didn't work well after wetsanding) and PB's SSR3 (took a bit longer). I've used DACP after my initial leveling with great results afterwards, and have finished with a hoard of products, of which you've seen me spout out a few times before ;)

I haven't "toyed" around much with just using wool as my initial cutting stage. I have typically used my E2K Yellow Foam pad for that, but I might just do that the next time around :bigups
 
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