In the current paint correction climate of fast cutting products and pads, Rupes introduced its Coarse Wool Pad earlier this year. Wool pads designed for DA use is a trend that has been developing and with good reason, wool pads cut and cut fast! A far cry from the old school body shop style wool pad, today’s DA wool pads provide the ability to cut through swirls and scratches while finishing down with great results. Such is the case of the Rupes Coarse Wool Pad, a pad that was developed to remove light to heavy swirls, scratches and holograms with minimal haze. I recently had an opportunity to use the Rupes Coarse Wool Pad on a project that I was helping my good friends with at Rehab Detailing in Cleveland.  The vehicle was a Porsche Cayenne in a color that looked to me like Nordic Gold, and most of us can agree that Porsche clear is pretty soft and easy to work with. So I went with my trusty Porsche combo for tackling on this vehicle and was immediately taken back to how hard this paint actually was!

With nothing cutting quickly and effectively, I needed to find a different approach on this stubborn hard paint. Luckily, the guys at Rehab had some brand new Rupes Wool Coarse Pads at their shop. I paired the wool pad with Rupes Zephir Gloss Coarse compound using my Rupes Mark II 15 Random Orbital Polisher and I was off to the races! For these pads, a medium polish or heavy compound is recommended when using this pad.

Rupes designed this wool pad with their “Dual-Density Fiber Build” technology. It is this dense wool that gives this pad its ability to cut and finish down so well. The pad also has a blue foam layer onto which the wool fibers are attached to and the pad tends to stay cooler. For this project, I was using the 5.5″ size but the pad is also available in sizes 1.5″, 2.5″, 3.5″ and 6.5″.

I used 4 pea size drops of Rupes Zephir Gloss onto the pad. When compared to other wool pads, the Dual Density technology gives a visual difference as you can see from the picture below.

The speed I used with this pad was 4.5 on my Rupes Mk2 15mm.  I stayed on this speed throughout the process of using this pad.

As you can see from the picture below, the vehicle had numerous swirls and scratches with a few deep scratches. This was the condition throughout the entire vehicle.

With the pad primed, I worked the product and pad for approximately 2 minutes or so before stopping and wiping down with a clean microfiber towel. I used medium pressure onto the polisher, again using a setting of 4.5 speed on the polisher. This pad can also be used with forced rotation polishers as well.

I highly recommend using compressed air to continually clean the pad during use. After several passes, the pad can become matted down and the pad is not as effective.

This is the panel after using the Rupes Wool Coarse Pad and Rupes Zephir combo! It turned what was a frustrating and bewildering finish to work with into a fast and easy process.

Overall, if you are looking to cut fast with minimal after effects of using an aggressive pad, then look into the Rupes Wool Coarse pad. The one thing that you should also expect, especially with using this particular combo is dusting. Like most wool pads, you do get fibers that come loose and if paired with a compound that is not low dusting, then you have some clean up to do after your compounding phase. The time that you lose in the clean-up, you certainly make up so much more of that time in the removal of defects. The other factor to consider is pad life for this particular product. I’ve been able to get about 6 cars out of one pad before it was significantly worn down and no longer useful. In my opinion, a small price to pay when it comes to the time and effort you save on a project.