Polishing Pads

Polishing pads the most important product you use while polishing. Indeed, many think that polishing compound is more important than a polishing pad and that this determines how many paint defects you will remove and how much shine you can get. However, this is not true at all. A polishing pad is more important during polishing than a polishing compound. A coarser polishing pad with more cutting power will always remove more paint defects than a polishing compound. Same with gloss. A softer polishing pad will always provide more shine than a finer polishing compound. This is why so many different polishing pads exist.

Different polishing pads vary from the coarseness of the polishing pad and the material. A foam pad is generally softer than a microfiber pad and a wool pad. As such, they are mainly used for finishing. Microfiber and wool have different properties and are close to each other. You can remove paint defects and finish with all polishing pads. Only that microfiber is usually coarser than wool. It mainly depends on the type of microfiber and wool. You can infer in the description how much cutting power the pad has.

Microfiber does have the disadvantage that it must be cleaned regularly during polishing. Microfiber absorbs all the polish and varnish you remove into its microfibers. As a result, the microfibers also cling to each other and no longer work as they should. It is therefore advisable to clean the pad every time you polish with a pad cleaner.

Wool has several types of polishing pads. They generally require no more maintenance than a standard foam pad. Modern wool pads can remove paint defects very well and can still finish very nicely. Wool also keeps the surface of the lacquer cooler which allows you to work better and safer.

Finally, polishing pads also come in different sizes. It is best to use a smaller pad when polishing small details such as front bumpers or even interior trim. A larger polishing pad for the roof is of course more convenient and faster. For every small polishing pad you can sometimes use a smaller one.

However, it is always important before polishing to wash the car thoroughly with a car shampoo and your 2 bucket method. Then clean the paint with an iron remover and tar remover. And finally give a clay treatment to remove dirt that is in the paint. This way, the paint is as clean as possible. If you are going to polish and there is still dirt on and in the paint, these are going to come loose during polishing and end up in the polishing pad. Because of this you are going to rub dirt, iron particles and tar around on the paint and you can cause damage and never get an optimal result.

With foam polishing pads you can always say that the harder the pad the coarser the polishing pad is and the softer the polishing pad the finer it is. Most polishing pads also include a center hole to provide cooling during polishing. This will make your polishing pad last longer and give you better results with a dual action polisher.