expired Posted by JollyDesk5102 • Dec 24, 2024
Dec 24, 2024 4:29 PM
Item 1 of 3
Item 1 of 3
expired Posted by JollyDesk5102 • Dec 24, 2024
Dec 24, 2024 4:29 PM
Chemical Guys TORQ R Precision Rotary Polisher
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$280
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For some background context here: I worked for several years as a professional buffer at a large (and unfortunately, recently shuttered) fire truck manufacturer in Pennsylvania. I sanded, buffed, and polished fire truck bodies fresh from the paint booth that were being built into custom pumpers for major customers like FDNY and Hawaii (Hawaii got several extremely expensive neon yellow all-stainless pumpers that were a nightmare to get right). I've got thousands of hours of experience on buffers at this point.
We used rotary buffers exclusively - specifically, we used the DeWalt rotary buffers with 9" 3M wool buffing pads and compound, and the 3M black foam polishing pads with polishing compound. Thousands of firetruck bodies, very few issues. Like the DeWalts we used, this Torq is a rotary buffer. For those who aren't aware of the difference, rotary buffers just spin the pad (like a right-angle drill spins a bit), whereas orbital buffers actually rotate the pad around in circles as it spins (the mount/arm the pad is mounted to is attached to a gearbox that makes it rapidly complete oscillating orbits as it polishes).
Rotary buffers are fine. I'd argue they're ideal for large panels, especially when you're cutting a new paint job and not just doing spot repairs or polishing. There's two major flaws with them - swirls and burning through the paint.
For swirls, since the pad is just spinning constantly in a circle, as you bring it along the paint you can end up with these semi-circle swirl marks left behind in a straight line. These are easy enough to fix - move up to a finer polish/pad, and an even finer polish/pad from there until the swirls are gone.
Burn-through is a bigger issue. It's something even experienced buffers have to work around, and the consequences can require a full repaint in the worst case scenario (burning through the clearcoat, or even the basecoat in some cases). Rotary buffers are powerful, aggressive tools that make quick work of paint jobs, which is great for volume work (or just not wasting hours of your time doing passes over one area). Paint isn't perfectly consistent in thickness, however, and rubbing/cutting/buffing compound and pads are more aggressive than your typical Walmart swirl-remover polish. If you aren't mindful of where and how you're buffing, you will remove too much paint in a thin area, and effectively destroy the paint job for that panel, because touch-ups/blends rarely work out well.
It took me months to learn how to handle rotary buffers well, no thanks to the inability of my supervisor to explain how to actually use the confounded thing properly. I'll share the gist of it here with you.
You're going to buff panel-by-panel; don't attempt to do multiple areas at once. Select a panel, and TAPE OFF ALL OF THE EDGES OF THE PANELS SURROUNDING IT. IE: if you're doing the driver side door, then you need to tape off the edges of the mirror, the edge of the rear driver door, the edge of the front fender, the edge of the rocker panel, etc. Use painters tape, and at least two layers. The reason for this is that you're going to end up brushing against the edges of other panels as you buff the one you're focusing on, and you will very easily burn through the edges of those other panels if you don't mask them up beforehand. Keep an eye on the tape as you buff - if you've almost burned through the tape on an edge somewhere, apply more tape. Tape is replaceable, paint not so much.
For the panel you've selected, keep in mind how the sun will hit it. When you're buffing the panel, you're going to cause some degree of waviness in the process of doing so, since the buffer is removing paint as you use it. You can mitigate this, but not eliminate it entirely, and it's better to keep those "waves" in-line with the curves of the vehicle's body so they naturally blend in with the existing contours. For most panels, this means you'll be going side to side (left and right) as you buff.
Pre-apply some compound to the pad you're using - you don't want to buff dry. Put compound all over the panel you're going to be working on. You'll get an idea for how much you need as you go, but when you see the compound is gone, don't continue buffing it dry; if you need more passes, add more compound. More is better with compound; too much compound and you'll just make a mess slinging it everywhere, but too little and you'll actually end up damaging the paint. I prefer to use a small microfiber applicator to spread the compound around to reduce the mess.
Gently press the buffer's pad against the car, firmly grasp the buffer (it has a LOT of torque, be very mindful of keeping control of it!), and slowly depress the trigger; if you're using a buffer with a variable speed trigger, this will let you slowly ramp the speed of the pad up. You only need about a second to ramp up, just don't immediately go from 0 to 100. 1400-1600 RPM tended to be the sweet spot for me with a wool pad and 3M compound. When you're pressing the buffer's pad against the car, you're only pressing HALF of the pad into the paint, and only with around 10-15lbs of force. Basically, instead of trying to force the pad flat against the paint, gently angle the buffer to one side so the pressure is only meaningfully applied to half of the pad. This gives you a buffing pattern that's going one direction in a semi-circle, rather than in every direction all at once; if you can't control the buffer when it's on the paint, it's because you need to angle it a little more. With that semi circle, assuming your buffer is spinning clockwise (from your perspective holding it), you can control where and how it's cutting the paint. As a right-handed person, I found myself applying pressure with my left hand and using the left side of the buffer to buff; my right arm remained stiff/tensed to control the vibration and pull/torque of the buffer as I used it.
Once you have an idea for the concept of "I'm only using half the pad, and it's making these half-circle cuts as I bring it along the panel", think about how that applies to edges. If you try to buff into an edge - that is, the buffer is spinning in a direction that it's pushing into the edge of the panel, rather than sliding off of the panel - you will burn the paint right off. This is where most burn-through happens; edges and corners have very thin paint. So, as a right-handed buffer, working along the top edge of a panel, and holding the left edge of the pad (spinning clockwise from my perspective) against the edge, the half of the pad that's actually contacting the panel and buffing it is making semi-circular strokes up and -OFF- the edge of the panel. This is exactly what you want. Imagine polishing by hand, and rubbing out towards the edge of the panel, and sliding off of it; that's what you're trying to do with the buffer. For the body of the panel, you'll do overlapping passes; don't go too slow. If you go too fast you just won't do much but make a mess, but if you go too slow you will burn the paint.
Now that you know how your buffer is pressing against the paint, what direction the cuts its making are going in, and why/where you want to use those cuts, you can actually go ahead and buff the panel. Start at an edge, and working clockwise, trail the buffer's edge along the edge so that it's rubbing "off" of the edge the whole way around the panel. Don't linger too long on the edges. Once you make it back to the point you started on the edge, start doing slow, overlapping horizontal passes over the panel, just like you'd mow the lawn. Repeat until compound is mostly gone, then reapply compound and repeat buffing until you no longer see the tiny circle marks in the paint from your orbital sander.
If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. Do not practice on any paint you do not want to destroy. You will ruin a lot of paint for the first few hours, or days, depending on your learning curve. Once you have it down smoothly and feel comfortable, then you can practice on some actual panels, and finally, the work you actually want to do. Rotary buffers are powerful tools and require care to use. Orbital buffers are forgiving, rotaries are not. I still use a rotary buffer to this day because it's a hell of a lot faster at the work I do than orbitals are.
Now, the million dollar question: should you buy this specific buffer?
The answer is "no, probably not."
Rotary buffers are powerful tools for bulk work, and use larger pads in line with that. This buffer has a 4.5" backing pad, which is a very odd and awkward size for a rotary buffer. It's small enough that those "waves" I mentioned will be much more visible, and it'll be easier to burn through the paint due to the smaller buffing area. For smaller work, I use a 3" foam pad on a rotary pneumatic polisher, which looks like a tiny little plastic drill. For larger work, it's the 9" wool pad. A 4.5" pad is in a weird middle area where it's too big for precision work, and too small to be practical on larger panels.
As for what you should buy: if you just want a no-nonsense tool to polish your car and make it shiny, get a weak, inexpensive orbital buffer with a gentle foam pad and some gentle polishing compound. It'll be very difficult to do damage with that, so the skill/practice requirement is much lower, and you can get "good enough" results. Professional detailers seem to prefer orbital buffers in these smaller sizes (4.5-6") for polishing paint, but I'm not sold on it. I would make the same recommendation to them as I would someone looking to buff a brand new paint job: big powerful rotary buffer, small precision rotary polisher, and -maybe- a gentle orbital to clean off swirl marks at the end and apply polish if you're so inclined.
I've used the DeWalt rotaries for thousands of hours and they're built like tanks, enduring insane abuse and overheating and still soldiering on; I would recommend them. Some others used Makita buffers with similarly good results, but parts are more difficult to come by. The Milwaukee cordless one is supposedly quite nice too, and easier to maneuver/handle as well. For your little polishers, I use a pneumatic one, but you can honestly get comparable results with a drill if you're very careful, or alternatively, Ryobi, Milwaukee, etc. do sell small 3" polishers.
One last note: with full size buffers like the DeWalts/etc. I mentioned and this one, I find the top-handle/D-ring handle to be awkward and useless. Buffers have a lot of torque and the ring handles don't give you a comfortable way to leverage that amount of force. A standard pole handle (like angle grinders have) is strongly preferable, in my opinion.
Edit: Glad to see the information was helpful. I took a closer look at the TORQ polisher, and I think my final judgement on it would be "thing that can't decide if it wants to be a buffer or a polisher". Another person mentioned that they sell 6" backing plates for this polisher, which I feel would be an improvement in most cases. The body style/shape and handle design of the TORQ are in line with a detailer's polisher - I looked at a few product videos online, and they all show the polishers slowly going over a car panel that's already clean and shiny to just make it shinier, rather than actually resolve any meaningful defects. But that's a job for an orbital, not a rotary. Rotary buffers are powerful and aggressive, and useful for all-in buffing jobs; orbital polishers in the hands of detailers are just used to take swirls and hairline scratches off of factory paint without removing much material in the process. The product demonstrators are all visibly struggling to control the polisher on the body, because they're holding it flat against the paint and the top handle is useless for controlling side-to-side torque pull.
With all that in mind, I can't recommend this polisher, even at $50. It's mechanically too powerful in a form factor where a more forgiving mechanism (orbital) is indicated. As far as buffers go: one thing I forgot to emphasize is that I was buffing panels I had sanded. If you KNOW you have a thick clear-coat to work with (ie: a paint job you did yourself and put 3 good coats of clear on at the end), you can remove orange peel with a multi-step buffing process. Using an orbital sander, you carefully use 1500 grit sandpaper to smooth down the paint until the orange peel is visibly reduced or gone altogether (you'll see high and low spots as you sand), and then go over it with 3000 grit wet-sanding pads (recommend the 3M Trizact pads, soaked in soapy water), and finally buff the sander marks out, and polish the buffer marks out. For that application - where you're actually buffing sanded paint, rather than just detail-polishing a factory paint job in good condition - you want a rotary buffer.
One final note about handles to cap this off: with a D-ring/top handle, there aren't really any great ways to hold the polisher. A lot of the product demonstrators were holding it in odd ways that either provided no torque control, or had their hand uncomfortably close to the spinning arbor. A straight pole handle (like angle grinders have) is preferable: with the buffer's trigger and grip in your right hand, bring your left hand -over- the pole handle, move your hand towards the buffer's head until it's as close as it can get, and place your thumb on top of the buffer's head. The newer Dewalts have a button recess up there that unintentionally provides a nice thumb rest. The final grip you get should look just like how you grasp the handlebars on a bicycle with a thumb shifter. You press down with the left half of your hand (using your arm to provide that force), which lets the "meat" on the left half of your palm press down on the handle and buffer out vibration a bit. You keep your index finger pressed up against the buffer's head (or the handle's end, if it has a flared end at the attachment point) to provide torque control against the pull of the buffer, and your thumb provides a stopping force for torque in the other direction. If the buffer tries to push counter-clockwise, your index finger will push back to control it; if the buffer tries to push clockwise, your thumb will push back to control it. Rotary buffers are powerful, unpredictable, and like to grab, twist, and jerk in unexpected ways. If you hold the buffer exactly as I described, you will have control over both directions that the buffer likes to jerk in, and will be able to buff effortlessly. When you've got the technique down well, you can buff across a panel without pressure, stress, or struggle, so effortlessly that you'll look like you're just watering the garden.
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For some background context here: I worked for several years as a professional buffer at a large (and unfortunately, recently shuttered) fire truck manufacturer in Pennsylvania. I sanded, buffed, and polished fire truck bodies fresh from the paint booth that were being built into custom pumpers for major customers like FDNY and Hawaii (Hawaii got several extremely expensive neon yellow all-stainless pumpers that were a nightmare to get right). I've got thousands of hours of experience on buffers at this point.
We used rotary buffers exclusively - specifically, we used the DeWalt rotary buffers with 9" 3M wool buffing pads and compound, and the 3M black foam polishing pads with polishing compound. Thousands of firetruck bodies, very few issues. Like the DeWalts we used, this Torq is a rotary buffer. For those who aren't aware of the difference, rotary buffers just spin the pad (like a right-angle drill spins a bit), whereas orbital buffers actually rotate the pad around in circles as it spins (the mount/arm the pad is mounted to is attached to a gearbox that makes it rapidly complete oscillating orbits as it polishes).
Rotary buffers are fine. I'd argue they're ideal for large panels, especially when you're cutting a new paint job and not just doing spot repairs or polishing. There's two major flaws with them - swirls and burning through the paint.
For swirls, since the pad is just spinning constantly in a circle, as you bring it along the paint you can end up with these semi-circle swirl marks left behind in a straight line. These are easy enough to fix - move up to a finer polish/pad, and an even finer polish/pad from there until the swirls are gone.
Burn-through is a bigger issue. It's something even experienced buffers have to work around, and the consequences can require a full repaint in the worst case scenario (burning through the clearcoat, or even the basecoat in some cases). Rotary buffers are powerful, aggressive tools that make quick work of paint jobs, which is great for volume work (or just not wasting hours of your time doing passes over one area). Paint isn't perfectly consistent in thickness, however, and rubbing/cutting/buffing compound and pads are more aggressive than your typical Walmart swirl-remover polish. If you aren't mindful of where and how you're buffing, you will remove too much paint in a thin area, and effectively destroy the paint job for that panel, because touch-ups/blends rarely work out well.
It took me months to learn how to handle rotary buffers well, no thanks to the inability of my supervisor to explain how to actually use the confounded thing properly. I'll share the gist of it here with you.
You're going to buff panel-by-panel; don't attempt to do multiple areas at once. Select a panel, and TAPE OFF ALL OF THE EDGES OF THE PANELS SURROUNDING IT. IE: if you're doing the driver side door, then you need to tape off the edges of the mirror, the edge of the rear driver door, the edge of the front fender, the edge of the rocker panel, etc. Use painters tape, and at least two layers. The reason for this is that you're going to end up brushing against the edges of other panels as you buff the one you're focusing on, and you will very easily burn through the edges of those other panels if you don't mask them up beforehand. Keep an eye on the tape as you buff - if you've almost burned through the tape on an edge somewhere, apply more tape. Tape is replaceable, paint not so much.
For the panel you've selected, keep in mind how the sun will hit it. When you're buffing the panel, you're going to cause some degree of waviness in the process of doing so, since the buffer is removing paint as you use it. You can mitigate this, but not eliminate it entirely, and it's better to keep those "waves" in-line with the curves of the vehicle's body so they naturally blend in with the existing contours. For most panels, this means you'll be going side to side (left and right) as you buff.
Pre-apply some compound to the pad you're using - you don't want to buff dry. Put compound all over the panel you're going to be working on. You'll get an idea for how much you need as you go, but when you see the compound is gone, don't continue buffing it dry; if you need more passes, add more compound. More is better with compound; too much compound and you'll just make a mess slinging it everywhere, but too little and you'll actually end up damaging the paint. I prefer to use a small microfiber applicator to spread the compound around to reduce the mess.
Gently press the buffer's pad against the car, firmly grasp the buffer (it has a LOT of torque, be very mindful of keeping control of it!), and slowly depress the trigger; if you're using a buffer with a variable speed trigger, this will let you slowly ramp the speed of the pad up. You only need about a second to ramp up, just don't immediately go from 0 to 100. 1400-1600 RPM tended to be the sweet spot for me with a wool pad and 3M compound. When you're pressing the buffer's pad against the car, you're only pressing HALF of the pad into the paint, and only with around 10-15lbs of force. Basically, instead of trying to force the pad flat against the paint, gently angle the buffer to one side so the pressure is only meaningfully applied to half of the pad. This gives you a buffing pattern that's going one direction in a semi-circle, rather than in every direction all at once; if you can't control the buffer when it's on the paint, it's because you need to angle it a little more. With that semi circle, assuming your buffer is spinning clockwise (from your perspective holding it), you can control where and how it's cutting the paint. As a right-handed person, I found myself applying pressure with my left hand and using the left side of the buffer to buff; my right arm remained stiff/tensed to control the vibration and pull/torque of the buffer as I used it.
Once you have an idea for the concept of "I'm only using half the pad, and it's making these half-circle cuts as I bring it along the panel", think about how that applies to edges. If you try to buff into an edge - that is, the buffer is spinning in a direction that it's pushing into the edge of the panel, rather than sliding off of the panel - you will burn the paint right off. This is where most burn-through happens; edges and corners have very thin paint. So, as a right-handed buffer, working along the top edge of a panel, and holding the left edge of the pad (spinning clockwise from my perspective) against the edge, the half of the pad that's actually contacting the panel and buffing it is making semi-circular strokes up and -OFF- the edge of the panel. This is exactly what you want. Imagine polishing by hand, and rubbing out towards the edge of the panel, and sliding off of it; that's what you're trying to do with the buffer. For the body of the panel, you'll do overlapping passes; don't go too slow. If you go too fast you just won't do much but make a mess, but if you go too slow you will burn the paint.
Now that you know how your buffer is pressing against the paint, what direction the cuts its making are going in, and why/where you want to use those cuts, you can actually go ahead and buff the panel. Start at an edge, and working clockwise, trail the buffer's edge along the edge so that it's rubbing "off" of the edge the whole way around the panel. Don't linger too long on the edges. Once you make it back to the point you started on the edge, start doing slow, overlapping horizontal passes over the panel, just like you'd mow the lawn. Repeat until compound is mostly gone, then reapply compound and repeat buffing until you no longer see the tiny circle marks in the paint from your orbital sander.
If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. Do not practice on any paint you do not want to destroy. You will ruin a lot of paint for the first few hours, or days, depending on your learning curve. Once you have it down smoothly and feel comfortable, then you can practice on some actual panels, and finally, the work you actually want to do. Rotary buffers are powerful tools and require care to use. Orbital buffers are forgiving, rotaries are not. I still use a rotary buffer to this day because it's a hell of a lot faster at the work I do than orbitals are.
Now, the million dollar question: should you buy this specific buffer?
The answer is "no, probably not."
Rotary buffers are powerful tools for bulk work, and use larger pads in line with that. This buffer has a 4.5" backing pad, which is a very odd and awkward size for a rotary buffer. It's small enough that those "waves" I mentioned will be much more visible, and it'll be easier to burn through the paint due to the smaller buffing area. For smaller work, I use a 3" foam pad on a rotary pneumatic polisher, which looks like a tiny little plastic drill. For larger work, it's the 9" wool pad. A 4.5" pad is in a weird middle area where it's too big for precision work, and too small to be practical on larger panels.
As for what you should buy: if you just want a no-nonsense tool to polish your car and make it shiny, get a weak, inexpensive orbital buffer with a gentle foam pad and some gentle polishing compound. It'll be very difficult to do damage with that, so the skill/practice requirement is much lower, and you can get "good enough" results. Professional detailers seem to prefer orbital buffers in these smaller sizes (4.5-6") for polishing paint, but I'm not sold on it. I would make the same recommendation to them as I would someone looking to buff a brand new paint job: big powerful rotary buffer, small precision rotary polisher, and -maybe- a gentle orbital to clean off swirl marks at the end and apply polish if you're so inclined.
I've used the DeWalt rotaries for thousands of hours and they're built like tanks, enduring insane abuse and overheating and still soldiering on; I would recommend them. Some others used Makita buffers with similarly good results, but parts are more difficult to come by. The Milwaukee cordless one is supposedly quite nice too, and easier to maneuver/handle as well. For your little polishers, I use a pneumatic one, but you can honestly get comparable results with a drill if you're very careful, or alternatively, Ryobi, Milwaukee, etc. do sell small 3" polishers.
One last note: with full size buffers like the DeWalts/etc. I mentioned and this one, I find the top-handle/D-ring handle to be awkward and useless. Buffers have a lot of torque and the ring handles don't give you a comfortable way to leverage that amount of force. A standard pole handle (like angle grinders have) is strongly preferable, in my opinion.
Edit: Glad to see the information was helpful. I took a closer look at the TORQ polisher, and I think my final judgement on it would be "thing that can't decide if it wants to be a buffer or a polisher". Another person mentioned that they sell 6" backing plates for this polisher, which I feel would be an improvement in most cases. The body style/shape and handle design of the TORQ are in line with a detailer's polisher - I looked at a few product videos online, and they all show the polishers slowly going over a car panel that's already clean and shiny to just make it shinier, rather than actually resolve any meaningful defects. But that's a job for an orbital, not a rotary. Rotary buffers are powerful and aggressive, and useful for all-in buffing jobs; orbital polishers in the hands of detailers are just used to take swirls and hairline scratches off of factory paint without removing much material in the process. The product demonstrators are all visibly struggling to control the polisher on the body, because they're holding it flat against the paint and the top handle is useless for controlling side-to-side torque pull.
With all that in mind, I can't recommend this polisher, even at $50. It's mechanically too powerful in a form factor where a more forgiving mechanism (orbital) is indicated. As far as buffers go: one thing I forgot to emphasize is that I was buffing panels I had sanded. If you KNOW you have a thick clear-coat to work with (ie: a paint job you did yourself and put 3 good coats of clear on at the end), you can remove orange peel with a multi-step buffing process. Using an orbital sander, you carefully use 1500 grit sandpaper to smooth down the paint until the orange peel is visibly reduced or gone altogether (you'll see high and low spots as you sand), and then go over it with 3000 grit wet-sanding pads (recommend the 3M Trizact pads, soaked in soapy water), and finally buff the sander marks out, and polish the buffer marks out. For that application - where you're actually buffing sanded paint, rather than just detail-polishing a factory paint job in good condition - you want a rotary buffer.
One final note about handles to cap this off: with a D-ring/top handle, there aren't really any great ways to hold the polisher. A lot of the product demonstrators were holding it in odd ways that either provided no torque control, or had their hand uncomfortably close to the spinning arbor. A straight pole handle (like angle grinders have) is preferable: with the buffer's trigger and grip in your right hand, bring your left hand -over- the pole handle, move your hand towards the buffer's head until it's as close as it can get, and place your thumb on top of the buffer's head. The newer Dewalts have a button recess up there that unintentionally provides a nice thumb rest. The final grip you get should look just like how you grasp the handlebars on a bicycle with a thumb shifter. You press down with the left half of your hand (using your arm to provide that force), which lets the "meat" on the left half of your palm press down on the handle and buffer out vibration a bit. You keep your index finger pressed up against the buffer's head (or the handle's end, if it has a flared end at the attachment point) to provide torque control against the pull of the buffer, and your thumb provides a stopping force for torque in the other direction. If the buffer tries to push counter-clockwise, your index finger will push back to control it; if the buffer tries to push clockwise, your thumb will push back to control it. Rotary buffers are powerful, unpredictable, and like to grab, twist, and jerk in unexpected ways. If you hold the buffer exactly as I described, you will have control over both directions that the buffer likes to jerk in, and will be able to buff effortlessly. When you've got the technique down well, you can buff across a panel without pressure, stress, or struggle, so effortlessly that you'll look like you're just watering the garden.
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