POLISHING COMPOUND FOR BUFFING WHEELS

WHAT ARE METAL POLISHING COMPOUNDS?
Our metal polishing compounds are used with airway buffing wheels to increase the effectiveness of the wheel while being used during the cutting, buffing, and polishing process. Some are of a coarser consistency and are usually used to remove scratches while the others are finer, which lends to them being used to shine and finish your work. They should be applied to airway buffing wheels by coating the edges of the airway buffs like below.

WHAT DO THE COLORS MEAN FOR METAL POLISHING COMPOUND?
The color of the polishing compound is almost always a byproduct of the natural abrasive ingredients. Tripoli powder, pictured below for example, is an abrasive product that along with the other formula's ingredients allows the buffing wheel to polish a metal surface. These abrasives are often pigments as well causing the bar color to take on the appearance of the abrasive.

In situations where abrasives may be similar in appearance, but have very different abrasive qualities, many manufactures (ourselves included) can add separate pigment or dye to help differentiate the products from one another.

WHAT COLOR POLISHING COMPOUND BARS SHOULD I PURCHASE?
Generally, we would recommend purchasing all or most of the bars as the volume of product should last a substantially long time for most knife makers. Also there are very little shelf life concerns so long as it's kept in a dry and roughly room temperature environment. That said, many knife makers favor black, pink, white, and green polishing compound bars as their workhorses.