So I had my grinder out and experimented with the cotton wheels I had on the other side, attempting to compare that method with my hand-applied Mothers Polish method.

My problem is the black film left on the alloy part and the buffer wheels. It comes off the part with a little WD40, but how do I clean the cotton wheels or, better yet, prevent it from happening.

(Admittedly, I used to polish Petoskey stones, so I had some ZAM wax on the buffers, so that might have contributed to my problem.)

I used a wire brush and that seemed to clean up the pads somewhat, as well as giving me some shiny tips on the wire brush, but I'm wondering about a better strategy.