Whew, there's been a lot of discussion in the past about buffing out your finish coat. Look in the archives; if you don't find them, I'll dig them out. Dave Houser shared some excellent advice on his experience in buffing out his "Yare" kayak.

Basically, after your final coat of varnish, you lightly sand using a series of finer wet/dry grits until you get up to 2000 grit. At that point, you've got the finish ready for buffing. I used a variable speed Random Orbital buffer turned down to about 2000 rpm, and foam pads from Meguiar's and Griot's Garage. The foam stays cool when you're buffing. I've used a cheap random orbital buffer with these foam pads running at higher speeds with good results.

Here's URLs for Meguiar's: http://www.meguiars.com/
and Griot's Garage: http://www.griotsgarage.com/index.jsp

You can also find pads and rubbing compounds at professional autobody paint stores. Wool pads might get things hot, though people have used them successfully.

This board's recommendations called for first using a "medium cut" cleaner/abrasive, then a "fine-cut" cleaner, and finally a swirl remover. Griot's garage will recommend using just the fine-cut cleaner and then the swirl remover. You can polish with a good wax afterwards, if you want, but you won't need to do so. The work with the buffer takes less than an hour, and the finish produced will look like a piece of fine furniture. Clean the sandpaper residue after each grit, and clean up after each buffing application.

After literally months of trying to get the perfect final coat of varnish on my Arctic Tern, I finally followed this board's suggestion and moved to the buffer. In one evening my frustrations disappeared. Any left over brush marks or imperfections will disappear, and the boat will sparkle. Overkill? Maybe, but it's worth the effort to have a nice finish, until you go out and use the boat. You can always touch up the deck with the buffer.

Give me a holler if you need the references or more advice.

Jim