Tip: Clean your pads often!

[Mike Phillips]

Tip: Clean your pads often!


How often?

If you're a perfectionist then you clean off the face of your buffing pad after each section of paint you buff.


After you buff a section of paint you have two things on the face of your pad, spent product and removed paint and if you don't clean these residues off the face of the pad you'll be grinding them back into the paint when you start buffing again.

When you're buffing out a car it's important to clean your pads often. By cleaning your pad often you will work faster and you will enable your pad and product to work more effectively. Be sure to have both clean terry cloth towels on hand and also a nylon pad cleaning brush. It's also a good idea to have plenty of pads so as a pad becomes wet with product you can switch over to a clean dry pad. Dry pads work better than wet pads.


ANYTIME you're abrading the surface whether you're using an aggressive cutting compound of an ultra fine polish, you have two things building up on the face of your buffing pad...

• Spent product
• Removed paint

You need to remove both of these substances from the face of the pad and the panel you're working on before you apply fresh product.

Here's what happens if you don't clean your pad often.

• Adding fresh product to spent product and removed paint adulterates or pollutes the fresh product you apply. You're wasting money and time and you're reducing the efficiency of the compounding or polishing process.

• You increase the risk of instilling micro-marring when you buff with a dirty pad. This is working backwards.

• Buffing with a dirty pad will be more difficult on you physically. Clean pads always make buffing smoother and easier.

• The fresh product you add will more easily cake-up on the face of the pad. Again this wastes product which wastes money.

• The product residue you leave behind on the paint will become gummy and hard to wipe off. This tires you out and anytime you have to fight or struggle to wipe product residue off paint you risk putting swirls and scratches back into the paint. This is working backwards.

• You accelerate Pad Saturation. Cleaning your pad using a terry cloth towel acts to remove some of the wetness out of the pad. By not cleaning your pad often the pad will become saturated faster. Wet pads do not work as efficiently as dry pads.

How to clean your pad with a nylon brush
Here's how to clean a pad with a nylon brush.

NOTE: you do this with the polisher turned OFF.







How to clean your pad on the fly using a terry cloth hand towel

Cleaning your pad on the fly is where you take a terry cloth towel, usually a medium size hand towel works best, you fold it in two and then simply hold the towel against the face of the pad and then turn the polisher on and use your hand that’s holding the towel to push the towel into the foam. This will act to draw any excess liquid out of the foam and any excess residue off of the face of the pad.


This is me using the Clean your Pad on the Fly Technique to clean my pad on the fly as I'm working around a car buffing it out.











This video explains the above technique in detail and shows you exactly how to use this technique to clean your pads.




How to clean your pad on the fly





The whole idea behind cleaning your pad on the fly is that you can remove a majority of the spent product and removed paint and then get back to work.

Buffing out an entire car already takes a l-o-n-g time...

Stopping to do some kind of pad cleaning procedure that isn't quick and easy keeps you from buffing on the paint. It makes a long job take even longer.


So get set up to clean your pads often by having a good pad cleaning brush and a collection of clean, dry terry cloth hand towels like you see me using in the pictures above.

[WRAPT C5Z06]

Couldn't agree more. Thanks Mike!

[b0b]

How often do you change Terry towels when cleaning your pads on the fly? Can't watch the video at work so not sure if it said something about that there.

Thanks!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

If you're a perfectionist then you clean off the face of your buffing pad after each section of paint you buff.

I couldn't agree more Mike. In fact I like to take it a step further and grab a fresh clean pad after every completed panel. Or in the case of a large panel such as a hood, I often grab a second pad midway through to finish off the second half.

Nice article BTW.

[Mike Phillips]

I couldn't agree more Mike. In fact I like to take it a step further and grab a fresh clean pad after every completed panel. Or in the case of a large panel such as a hood, I often grab a second pad midway through to finish off the second half.

More pads are better....


Not only will switching to a clean, dry pad often help you do the job faster you'll get better results and the other benefit is your pads will laster longer overall because you're not punishing them.

Nice article BTW.

Thanks Mike...


It's actually a re-write of an older article. I've come to the conclusion that perception is that if an article is old then it's discounted?

I believe if the information is accurate at the time it was written then the article's value endures. That said,

Perception is reality


Too hard to try to change perception so I just go with it.

[wdmaccord]

With no forced rotation, I've found it difficult to use the towel method to clean on the fly with a GG6. I tried something a little different that worked "easier" and thought I would post it up here in case others might want to try it:

I have a large carpet remnant in my garage that follows me around during paint details to kneel on, etc. I put the towel down on the carpet remnant and step on it at each end so the towel is taught against the carpet underneath. Then I turn on the machine against the taught towel pushing down and pulling up slightly so I can see the backing plate spin. I use speed 6 on the GG6.

[Mike Phillips]

With no forced rotation, I've found it difficult to use the towel method to clean on the fly with a GG6.

I find this strange? The towel method works best with NON-forced rotation/oscillation tools and in fact doesn't work at all with the Flex 3401.

I've used this technique for at least 20 years now and it's fast and effective. It also works best with small diameter thin pads as I can reach my fingers around the outside perimeter of the pad but it also can be with the larger pads on the market too...

I tried something a little different that worked "easier" and thought I would post it up here in case others might want to try it:

I have a large carpet remnant in my garage that follows me around during paint details to kneel on, etc. I put the towel down on the carpet remnant and step on it at each end so the towel is taught against the carpet underneath. Then I turn on the machine against the taught towel pushing down and pulling up slightly so I can see the backing plate spin. I use speed 6 on the GG6.

Well the most important thing is to find a method that works best for you because it's important to work clean.

I knew a guy that had a rectangular chunk of carpet nailed to the wall in his shop and what he did when using a rotary buffer was to run the spinning pad against this chunk of carpet to clean it.

This was probably 25+ years ago and I cringe when I think of the finish quality being turned out back then as compared to today.

Keep in mind 20 years ago the pads, chemicals and even tools you guys all use were not available. It was a very different world.

Then came along this thing called the Internet.

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

I knew a guy that had a rectangular chunk of carpet nailed to the wall in his shop and what he did when using a rotary buffer was to run the spinning pad against this chunk of carpet to clean it.

This was probably 25+ years ago and I cringe when I think of the finish quality being turned out back then as compared to today.

Talk about cleaning your pad on the fly! With his method you don't have to turn off the machine!

I can't even fathom what the paint looked like when he was finished.

[tooshort_128]

Cleaning on the fly definitely helped with my most recent buff/polish on my truck. A clean pad works SOOO much better. Thanks Mike for the plethora of info you share with us.

[wdmaccord]

I find this strange? The towel method works best with NON-forced rotation/oscillation tools and in fact doesn't work at all with the Flex 3401.

I've used this technique for at least 20 years now and it's fast and effective. It also works best with small diameter thin pads as I can reach my fingers around the outside perimeter of the pad but it also can be with the larger pads on the market too...

Quite possible I just didn't try it long enough to get good at it before I tried the towel against the carpet held in place by my feet. Plus I get nervous about the loose part of the towel getting sucked into the mechanical parts behind the backing plate. I'm certainly not using the carpet to clean the pad...I hope I didn't misconstrue that. I have some good white hand towels from Towel Supercenter that I bought just for pad cleaning.