# Foam buff heads vs lambswool head?



## Automake (Dec 2, 2008)

My question is this: Whenever i have seen tutorial videos on youtube of Meguiars staff demonstrating compunding with rotary machines, they always use lambswool heads, many retailers on DW dont seem to be selling these compound wool heads only the foam heads.


I am currently using 3M fine cut plus and find that using a soft (black) polishing head works fine, the product stays on the body panel and the head. if i use a harder foam head most of the product gets warm and cakes up on the head and the finish on the panel looks dreadful. just to add i run the speed of the machine quite slow

Is this the right combination to use with this 3M product?


thanks guys


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## Sandro (Mar 16, 2008)

Wool pads are very aggressive and i think most people never (or rarely) find a need to use them. I not used one before, even on the worst paint so far hasnt needed one.

Is it Fast Cut Plus or Extra fine your using? ive not experience fine cut plus before.
Have you tried mixing the you polish with Ultrafina? its quite oily so should help to stop the polish sticking to the paint. (like 2 dots of Fast cut, plus 2 dots of ultrafina on your pad)


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## Automake (Dec 2, 2008)

I am using the Fast cut plus (green top) and the Ultrafina (blue top) for finishing, i have tried your method of mixing which does not really work, i find that the soft pad which should only be used for finishing works well but i find it takes a long time to buff out 2000 grade wet sanding scratches.

Any other pads which work well with Fast Cut Plus?


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## pete001 (Dec 21, 2006)

Automakeover said:


> I am using the Fast cut plus (green top) and the Ultrafina (blue top) for finishing, i have tried your method of mixing which does not really work, i find that the soft pad which should only be used for finishing works well but i find it takes a long time to buff out 2000 grade wet sanding scratches.
> 
> Any other pads which work well with Fast Cut Plus?


Yes, there are many.I have had very good results using FCP with the following pads,

Cool foam orange light cut waffle pad

3M green compounding pad #50487

Meguiars burgandy cutting pad #W7006

Depending of course on level of correction hardness of paint etc etc

HTH :thumb: .


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## Saqib200 (May 13, 2008)

I use the orange waffle compounding pad, easily takes out 2000 grit sanding marks. Can be followed up with a second hit if necessary on harder paints.

I find the waffle pad alot easier to use than the flat green/orange 3M pads.


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## Dream Machines (Mar 13, 2006)

wool has it's place. I have foamed wool, edge black, edge yellow and Tuf Buff wool
Very good tool if the paint has an out of focus look to it.


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Wool is an interesting topic and something I dabbled with in testing last year and now use on detailing where it is required - however I view it as an aggressive cutting solution where large area severe defect removal is required. For example, a bonnet covered with RDS would lead me to say #85 on wool (if needed, of course) for a couple of reasons:


Wool has greater cut, and so over a large area offers faster and better correction
Wool runs cooler than foam, so for aggressive correction is safer from the standpoint of avoiding paint burns

However, one cannot forget the amount of paint that can be typically removed by wool which is fairly large on most paint systems and this is often not required. On a bad car, sure it is and then wool has its place if and only if it is used correctly.

For many cars though, you will see general swirls that are corrrected by medium polish or compound on foam, resulting in less paint removed (better overall for the finish). Typically you may then be left with the odd deeper scratch that warrants a more "spot-correction" like approach with small compounding foam pad or even wetsanding. This giving a more localised correction than a big wool mop does.

However, this leads me to recent testing with small wool pads that I got from Ben at Carnaubawaxshop, and Epoch here has tried IIRC with good success and does add another dimension to wool to make it more appealing by increasing its flexibility.

In summary though, wool does indeed have its place but for me its for aggressive correction over wide areas - large area wetsanding is also possible but to be honest, I prefer the results by wool in these situations and rather view wetsanding as a spot-correction technique or an "all-or-nothing" approach to getting a mirror like finish by removing peel... the latter is all well and good but not something I'd recommend for a daily driver, but thats a topic for another thread.


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