Thread: Buffing Questions

In the never ending quest for a better finish, I have just bought a mandrel buffing system. It came in the mail today.
This one from GPW Mandrel Buffing System

It is now out of stock, I may have got the last one

First impressions are it is a well made bit of gear for the price.

My wood lathe has a #1MT, so the first job was to chuck it in the metal lathe, and turn the MT down to the correct size.
Checked it inside the lathe spindle with some bearing blue, it is good enough for me. About 75% contact.

Anyway the kit comes with 2 buffs, one soft one, and one a bit stiffer, and only one stick of buffing compound ( it is light blue ).
I am assuming this is to be used on the stiffer one, and the softer one to be used to buff some wax on.
Can anyone shed some light on this please ?

I gave it a bit of a test run with the blue stick on the stiffer buff, had a few finished pen tubes laying on the bench, a couple of wood ( CA finish), a polymer clay ( CA finish ) and an acrylic resin, so I gave them a buff up.
I can already see an improvement over my old method. And thats without going to the softer one yet.

I have a drawer full of old buffs that fit onto my bench grinder and a range of different coloured buffing compounds, left over from when I was restoring my BSA. Will have to check out what grits they are.

I think I would rather use the finest grit on the softer one rather than use it for wax. What are other peoples thoughts ?