Hi Guys, Decided to do my own little comparison between the Festool Shinex and Flex Rotary Polishes. Reason is that i have had a bit of a hard time controlling the Flex Rotary. Using the Flex Forced Rotation DA Polisher has probably spoilt me because it is just so easy to control, but the Flex Rotary is a different machine altogether. It has not been easy to master the machine because it wants to skip around and go off in its own direction quite often. A different Technique is required to successfully use a Rotary. I know it is mostly inexperience and operator error on my part, but it is proving to be quite a learning curve.
Here are the 2 Polishers as i put them through their paces yesterday -
The first clue about which machine is the easier to handle was when our painter Luke was compounding Jack`s Mach1 last week. While he was Polishing the bootlid, he stopped the Festool Shinex to go and get another cloth. I seized the moment and switched the Festool over for the Flex Rotary. In Luke`s experienced hands he seemed to have the Flex totally under control. I watched him for a few minutes then left for about 10 minutes. Upon my return i immediately noticed he had switched back to the Festool. I asked him why he had changed back tothe Festool. He shrugged his shoulders and said he was just used to using the Festool. Hmmm.... That made me wonder.
The bonnet on our daily driver Territory had quite a few swirl marks and scratches on it and i had been wanting to polish it for a while. Washed and clayed the bonnet first and then scratched it up with a scourer pad to deliberately make it worse. Here are a couple of before photos -
Fitted a new Yellow Cutting Pad to the Flex Rotary, applied 4 dobs of PF2400 Polish to the Pad, primed it with Quick Detailer and set about polishing the passenger side of the bonnet. I was waiting for the Polisher to start taking off on me, but by putting a bit of bias to the front of the polisher it was not too bad - or maybe i am getting used to handling it. It was still a handful, but thankfully controllable. The Rotary polisher is a lot faster at breaking down polish due to the circular motion creating a lot of heat. Only took about 15 minutes to polish half the bonnet, even allowing for the fact i was using a fair bit of pressure to eliminate the scratches.
Changed over to the Festool Shinex to polish the other half of the bonnet. First thing i noticed was the Festool seemed to spread the polish more evenly even though both polishers start at the same speed of 400RPM. The Festool was definitely easier to handle. I did not feel like i was fighting this polisher as much. I quickly understood why Luke had changed back to the Festool Shinex. In my opinion it is a better balanced polisher.
Both polishers did an excellent job. Those swirls, scratches and scuff marks are gone. I will persevere and master the Flex Rotary. By using a combination of Rotary and DA Polisher i know that the time spent doing a 3 or 4 stage polish on a car will be cut down by about 30 - 40%.
I used the Flex Forced Rotation DA polisher to do a second stage on the bonnet, mainly to make sure there would be no holograms left from buffing. What a delight it was to use that polisher.
A couple of finished photos -
Today i was asked to polish the bonnet on another Territory. Guess which Rotary i used........... Yep, the Festool Shinex!
Rocket.