Exactly, I like to be comfortable. Im a believer that if you dont like wearing it then you wont wear it as often. I like wearing it because I just don't have to worry about anything. My sinuses are very sensitive to dust and while safety glasses help, when using the buffing wheels and such, plenty of stuff just goes behind them. Safety glasses always fog too.
Its kind of a DIY, it lists every step I took to refinish that wheel. I didn't include a picture for every step because its tough to see the difference between each grit in a picture.
For maintenance, polish a couple times per year and apply a sealer, avoid acid washes and keep them rinsed off in the winter months.
The sander is use is a 6" 3M DA with the largest orbit. Forgot what it was. I use a "Hookit" backing plate which you have to get seperate. Then I use hook it discs from 40grit to 3000 grit for various things. For 40-180 I use purple discs, 240-1000 I use gold discs, above 1000 I use Trizact. You can get these at any body shop supply place or your local NAPA. The sander is about $160 or so. Backing plate is another $20. Discs range from $0.60 up to $8.00 for some of the Trizacts. Depends how many you buy at a time though too. I buy case quantities which are generally 25,50,75 or 100 depending on the grit and/or series. The expensive Trizacts sometimes come in 15 packs. All of the tool trucks also have their own rebranded palm sander. Dynabrade also makes a good one.
The buffer I use for metal polishing is a DeWalt DWP849X. You can get this at numerous places for around $200. This will work for polishing your paint as well. Personally I keep this one strictly for metal polishing and use a Flex PE14 rotary for paint. The Flex is nicer and smoother for paint but does not have the grunt needed for metal. This allows me to avoid cross contamination as well.
The air way wheels I use can be purchased at a few places. The spiral sewn and others are made by numerous manufacturers. I got mine from Zephyr, Caswell plating also has a good selection.
The compounds I also get from Zephyr, but again there are many other places like Caswell and Matchless Metal.
The Acid wash you can get at most truck shops, if nothing else the local truck wash should be setup for Acid washes, they may not sell it to you but will wash your stuff for you for very little money.
Sander and some boxes of discs.
Polisher with wheels and compounds in the background. The bars on the left are the compounds. Many people call these "rouge bars" however you should not confuse them with true jewelers rouge which is one kind of compound. The wheels are on the right. The ones with the metal centers are airway wheels. You need to get the safety flanges to use these. They come in various levels of aggressiveness as well.
This video gives a good run down of the various stages. Whenever I hit the stuff with the first wheels the noise surprises a lot of people, sounds just like a grinding wheel every though they are just treated cloth.
[YOUTUBE]FCGgRRPe9Ig[/YOUTUBE]
