buffing compound

[1930artdeco]

Rather that hijack another thread I thought I was start a new one. I am curious when buffing things out, what are the different compounds used for? I have seen red, white and black (I think). I would like to restore a set of head lights for my car and they are stainless steel.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[rlitman]

Red and black are the same, and are extremely fine, but are too soft to do much of anything to stainless.
Green is a little coarser, and can get a mirror polish on stainless.
Yellow (if you ever see it) is still pretty fine, but is for harder metals, and is a good final polish on stainless.
Grey (also sometimes called stainless), then white, then tripoli (brown) are the next coarser steps. They're more for removing scratches, cutting and shaping, than polishing (with grey being on the border of polishing).

 

[zkling]

Start by reading this

http://www.caswellplating.com/buffman.htm

 

[DocsMachine]

Red and black are the same, and are extremely fine, but are too soft to do much of anything to stainless.
Green is a little coarser, and can get a mirror polish on stainless.
Yellow (if you ever see it) is still pretty fine, but is for harder metals, and is a good final polish on stainless.
Grey (also sometimes called stainless), then white, then tripoli (brown) are the next coarser steps. They're more for removing scratches, cutting and shaping, than polishing (with grey being on the border of polishing).

-That's almost entirely backwards from the compounds I've used. Admittedly, it's mostly hardware-store stuff, but I was given to understand the colorings were generally universal.

With the stuff I use, black is the coarsest, which I generally use on hard materials like steel and stainless. Brown is a "medium" grit, for general use on aluminum and brass, and white is extra-fine, for either a final shine on the softer metals, or for plastics. (I've used it on acrylic.)

Doc.

 

[crab]

-That's almost entirely backwards from the compounds I've used. Admittedly, it's mostly hardware-store stuff, but I was given to understand the colorings were generally universal.

With the stuff I use, black is the coarsest, which I generally use on hard materials like steel and stainless. Brown is a "medium" grit, for general use on aluminum and brass, and white is extra-fine, for either a final shine on the softer metals, or for plastics. (I've used it on acrylic.)

Doc.

That is correct, green is actually for plastic. For stainless, if it wasn't real bad I'd start with Tripoli [ brown] and finish it up with white. By the way none of this is buffing compound, that comes in a can or bottle, it's rouge.

 

[vintage nut]

You can't go by colors, because every brand has different colors for different things. For my knifemaking I use jacksonlea compounds, green is a compound specifically for the mirror polish on stainless. Other brands green might be something else.
Color helps, but you really can't count on it

you can never have too many tools