A brief word about polishing . Heat is your enemy , oil and grease not far behind . When changing from coarse to finer compounds it's better to change the mop with it rather than mix grits . Although most modern auto wax and finish products will not turn color within reasonable temperatures a few will go blue or amber with just normal engine heat . To this day the only thing I've found for protecting the pipes is the oily rag ;-) .
And last but not least I made a final mop from circles cut from a chamois and stacked onto a a die grinder cut off wheel arbor . Too large a circle and the chamois just winds up on the shaft . Too small a circle and the die grinder easily over speeds the cloth and it disappears at extraordinary velocities .
So , I have these two identical appearing Cp die grinders . One was an experiment into "porting the rotary air motor" . The usual hog out the passages and not so subtly alter the port timing so that the torque went away and the RPM was somewhere north of 25K . The other is near stock save for it usually wears the 3" cut off due to its torque .
So I built up a 2 1/2" mop out of 5 or 6 layers and mistakenly stuck it in the 30K+ rpm die grinder ....
First trigger pull the mop exploded and for a instant I considered myself fortunate that the debris had somehow missed my face . I looked up to see a fair portion of the chamois wrap itself around a whip antenna and bend it near horizontal , directly away from me . In a near Warner Brothers cartoon moment I froze , the antenna froze , waiting for the inevitable .
What didn't hit me full in the face ricocheted off into the air compressor belt guard , there to foul and dismount the belt with enough force to blow the guard off . The rest knocked my last pack cigarettes off the the bench to be soaked by the last beer in the house also falling off bench .
it was worth telling