Compound/polish -- pad companion chart

[luckydawg]

One of the other members told me someone had made up a polish / pad chart that gave a good place to start with.

Any one else remember that too ?

[ski2]

Here is a chart of the relative aggressiveness of correction creams, but I don't know how anyone could have a chart linking this to pads--there is no common color coding across different manufacturers or even within a manufacturer's own different lines of pads. On top of that most correction creams can be used with pads of different aggressiveness.

https://www.autopia.org/forums/paint-correction-and-gloss-enhancement/187053-updated-2-2017-autopia-polish-comparison-chart.html

[luckydawg]

Thanks

[pilotpip]

Not to mention, most manufacturers have so many pads that seem to overlap each other.

[Calendyr]

The polish chart is a good starting point to choose your products. As for pads, there are many manufacturers so color coding can vary... you would have to look at the specific manufacturer's products to know which pad does what.

As a rule of thumb here are the pad types you will find from least agressive to most agressive:

Foam Finishing pads : Used for application of waxes and sealants mostly. Colors are often Red, Blue and Black (again, depends on manufacturer)
Foam Polishing pads : Used mostly for polishes and All-in-one products. Colors are often white, green and orange
Microfiber polishing pads : Same as Foam polishing pads but with more cutiting ability. Usually no color coding.
Foam cutting pads : Used mostly for compounds and all-in-ones. Colors are often yellow or blue.
Microfiber cutting pads : Used for compounds and all-in-ones. No color coding.
Wool cutting pads: Used mostly for rotary polishers to do heavy compounding. No color coding, pads are usually white.

There are usually varying level of cut in the same category. For exemple, Buff and shine have 3 foam polishing pads that are light polishing, medium polishing and heavy polishing (green, white and orange). Same goes for finishing pads. Microfiber cutting pads can also have more than one level of aggressiveness. For example Meguiar's have cutting disks and extra cutting disks.

To start with, you should get 1 type of each category (Finishing, polishing, cutting) and get a few pads of the same type for each category. I like to use 2 per car but some detailers will use one per pannel.
As for products, I suggest you get 1 sealant, 1 pure polish, 1 all-in-one polish (polish with a sealant), 1 compound and 1 all-in-one compound (compound and polish hybrid). This will allow you to tackle pretty much every paint you come across.

For a DA, microfiber cutting disk do the best job for paint correction. For polishes and sealants, foam is the way to go.

Hope this gives you a good base to make your choices.