Black on Buffing Wheels

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spnemo

spnemo

Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
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261
Location
Tustin, MI
I have some black dust or residue on my Beall Buffing wheels. What is a good and safe way to remove it. I think it came from brass.

Do I just have to buy new wheels?
 
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I think you may have to replace them. I don' tknow if the black can be removed.

You can try an abrasive such as sandpaper but I am not sure how well it will work.

The only thing you can do is keep any metal away from your wheels. Even when buffing a pen or stopper or such. Use delrin or another material but never any metal.
 
Buff the edge of a 2.x 2 or some other piece of substantial wood. As sharp a corner as you can find.

This will take off the tripoli build up and if all goes well, remove your black (if it is not deep into the wheels)
 
There is a specialty tool called a buff rake that is designed just for this, and guess what? It works! Imagine that. Most places sell it for $15 plus. I got just the metal part from www.jantzsupply.com years ago, put a wooden handle on it, and still use it frequently. They still have it for under $7 You can eat a buff down with it as far as you want to go. It's incredibly messy though, and the fluff sticks to you and drives you nuts, especially if you have a beard.

If a buff is contaminated too deeply, it's best just to get a new one. I got like a dozen really nice quality flannel ones a few years ago off ebay for like $2.50 each plus shipping, and still have 3 or 4 new ones left. They are consumables folks, just like sandpaper. They do last longer, but not forever. If you buy in bulk when you find them reasonably priced, you can afford to get rid of them when they start to get too dirty to clean, or too small to use from cleaning.

Just checked, price seems to have gone up a bit, or the bargains are gone at the moment, but a little watching will pay off I'm sure.
 
Thanks guys. I would have just bought new wheels but these are very low mileage and I hate to throw anything away if I can fix it.
 
If it's black from brass then a rake won't do you any good. A rake will get rid of caked on compound but it won't get rid of "brass/copper black".
If it's not REAL bad it won't hurt anything, just be more careful next time!:wink::biggrin:
 
It won't hurt good finishes or PR as long as the hardened wax is removed with a rake or something. But if you buff bare wood... Don't. If you do bare wood, dedicate a buff to just wax and wood. I write on mine so I don't forget.
 
rherrell said:
If it's black from brass then a rake won't do you any good. A rake will get rid of caked on compound but it won't get rid of "brass/copper black".
If it's not REAL bad it won't hurt anything, just be more careful next time!:wink::biggrin:
Click to expand...

Well, true to a point, you can't really clean the brass residue off the material with a buff rake, but you can quite easily remove 1/8 to 1/4 inch of material from the buff and get down to clean fabric if they contamination is not too deep.
 
They are cheap enough that I have several buffing wheels that I have dedicated to certain types of materials . I have two for metals (tripoli , white diamond) , three for acrylic/CA (tripoli , white diamond and a clean buffing) and I even have a dedicated one for black and any gold web tru-stone . To keep them from getting to built up with the compounds I use a pet brush as a rake . It's one of those brushes with the short metal wire bristles that they use for dog grooming , I got it from the local pet store for about $5 and it works great without being as hard on the buffs as the buff rake is , it cleans the buffs very nicely .
 
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