Thread: Buffer leaving small scratches

Yesterday I was finishing up sanding a blade. I did my normal sanding progression, then followed with a felt wheel on my dremel. At this point things were looking very smooth with just some haze from the dremel.

I went to my buffer and started with green compound and a stitched cotton wheel. Unfortunately I now have a bunch of small little scratches on the blade.

I don't have a wheel rake. Not sure if this would have changed my outcome or not.

At this point I have a little bit of hate on for my buffer. Anyone have suggestions to help me like it again?

try loose cotton wheel.
also make sure the wheel is not cross-contaminated with lower grit compounds

If you have a buffer, why are you putting yourself at risk with a Dremel? Is there something you can do with the Dremel that you can't with the buffer?

The haze of the dremel might have masked the scratches that ended up showing with the buffer.

What compounds or products did you use on your felt wheel?

And why would you start with green compound on your buffer. You normally end with green rouge after going through your black and white progression first. Unless the razor just needs a final buff/polish you would use green.

As you can probably tell, this is one of those situations where it could be a lot of different things, but we don't have all the information.

Another possibility is that the scratches are from the green wheel because you didn't rake the wheel. I had this happen to me initially with black compound - I got really deep scratches because I didn't rake the wheel properly.

Originally Posted by dnjrboy

At this point I have a little bit of hate on for my buffer.

Yep, it's always the tools...

Originally Posted by Maximilian

And why would you start with green compound on your buffer. You normally end with green rouge after going through your black and white progression first. Unless the razor just needs a final buff/polish you would use green.

Wait, I thought white "rouge" was finer than green chromium oxide.

Alright, I'll take some pictures when I get home tonight. Hopefully that will be able to provide some better explanation of what I am doing.

I use the dremel because I have familiarity with it. I just got the buffer. The devil you know vs the devil you dont.

Alright, here are some pictures of my ghetto buffing setup.

Sewn cotton with green stuff on it


Sewn cotton with white stuff on it


Loose cotton with blue stuff on it


I am using a craftsman bench grinder for some of my work, but find that at 3450 rpm it generates heat way too quick. I also repurposed my grandfathers old lathe into a buffer. Some of the tail stock pieces were broken, and this give me some speed adjustment capabilities.

Getting pics of the scratches was rather hard.

Dremel scratches:


Scratches from loose cotton and blue stuff. This picture was taken after the dremel picture. These are the scratches that were made by the buffing wheel after the dremel. You can see (I hope) no vertical scratches in the dremel picture.



I found a wirebrush to rake out my wheels. I don't think it helped very much.

Any suggestions as to what I could do differently to decrease the scratches?