Well I have some cheap **** Turtle Wax buffer thing (don't know proper name) and I'm not sure which pads to use for what. I have blue thin ones for applying wax, some white cotton ones for removing the wax, then 2 other ones I don't know much about. One is a yellow foam pad which I *think* is for applying polish, but I'm not sure. The other is an off-yellow color which I *think* I use for after removing the wax to polish it a little bit. I can get some pics if you don't quite follow this. Thanks guys.

 

The denser of the two is most likely used for light compound and the other for polish. That's my best guess without being able to look and feel them.

 

For my 3M SMR, it says I can use a foam pad on a buffer if I don't want to do it by hand, which I don't. Does that sound like the foam yellow one I described earlier?

 

Should be, just can't tell you for sure.

 

Usually they TELL you what each bonnet is for in the instruction booklet, don't they?

I'd be inclined to use the terry cloth bonnets for all polishing jobs. For hand polishing you'd possibly use a folded terry towel anyway. I am pretty sure the foam bonnet is for dry buffing (not recommended) and you can probably buff off any residues by hand just as well, if not better/faster because you don't have to switch bonnets and towels won't get loaded up as fast.

Not many people seem to know about using these machines to polish because of their many limitations, and foam pad recommendations for the PC don't translate to buffers like these...