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I've had an electric buffing wheel for many years, ever since I set up my first work bench in the basement of my parents' home in Annapolis, Maryland in the mid 1970s.

Electric buffing machines with special buffing pads do the best - and fastest - job of polishing aluminum housings. However, one of the difficulties I've had has been finding wheels of sufficient thickness and diameter. The largest I've ever been able to find has been 8" in diameter and 1/2" thick.

So what I did was put two of them together on my buffing motor. That worked pretty well until I'd have to do some bearing-down on the buffing wheel. If I'd press too hard, the two wheels would separate.

Well, I'm looking forward to getting my workshop running again in the spring, along with continuing to greatly reduce my inventory one way or another. I decided to look for buffing wheels on eBay and ... EUREKA! ... HOOVER!! ... KIRBY!!! I found a 10" wheel that's an inch thick!!!! Yowzer!!!!!

It arrived today and I can hardly wait to start using it. When I get it installed on my machine I'll post some more photos.

It cost $25.97 + $7.49 Priority Mail. That may seem high until you start pricing smaller and less-thick wheels, which average $10-15.

Here's a link to the listing in case anyone else wants to get one, and then some photos. The last photo is of one of the industrial-strength buffing machines at the Kirby factory in Cleveland. That buffing wheel is 12 inches in diameter and two inches thick.