It's very much like grinding. It depends on how fast you move your turned
piece/tool-to-be-ground and how much heat you want to generate. While you
don't want to generate much heat in the grinding process, you do want to
generate enough heat to melt the various waxes used in the compounds so the
polishing agents (or just the carnauba in that case) will do their thing.
The faster you can move your turned piece around to buff it, the faster you
can have your RPMs. In fact, the faster you move your turned piece around,
the faster you *need* the RPMs so that enough heat will be generated to
work. ahhh, but not TOO much heat or you'll go right through your finish!

Generally, I buff at 1000 to 1500 RPM but may drop down to 500 on the
insides of hollow forms or in particularly sensitive areas like sharp edges
where it's really easy to go through a finish. I'll go up to the 1800s on
flat easy areas when I'm in a hurry or using a high-carnauba wax mixture.

- Andrew


"Alan" wrote in message
...
Hi folks,
I haven't used my Beal Buffing System for quite some time and can't
remember
the optimum speed. The Beal web site says something about 1725 RPM but
that
seems awful fast for buffing ?? Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.