Monkey Pads? Twister Pads? Any info?

Yes David, I too would like to know. Monkey pads sound too good to be true.

Dave is out of town on his anniversary right now. He'll be back at the end of the week. I'm sure he'll reply when he gets back.






Rick Gelinas

For others with interest in this subject, see
http://www.monkeypads.com and http://www.htc-twister.com.

Even though I haven't used them personally,I do know they can do nothing for lippage removal.So if you have a perspective client with a possible floor candidate and they need to have lippage removal as well as hone,polish,ect..then all you are doing is making a cruddy floor shinier...I'm sure someone would think that is okay but I wouldn't.



I should buy some to see what all the hoopla is about.



Patrick

Hi Mark, Ray & Patrick
Mark, as for the actual Monkey pads no I have not used them. I have used three other fiber based types of pads all with varying degrees of success. As Ray said, sounds too good to be true. What I have found is that these types of pads do have a place when it comes to working on stone, all be it limited.

Two areas I have had good success with this type of pad are on textured stone and also buffing out a concrete floor that had been polished. Why the pad worked so well on the textured floor is the same reason why they wont work across the board in every application. Let me explain.

With that floor it had an intentional texture to the floor. In about three areas the floors finish had gotten abraded. The only way to remove the damage to the stone was to use powders (slow, messy and a little challenging to blend). The other alternative would have been to use traditional rigid diamonds; the problem with that is that the diamonds would have made the stone completely flat/smooth, removing the desired texture. What we did was run fiber based diamonds under our Cimex and we got unbelievable results. It was fast, easy and we matched factory appearance. Why did it work so well on that floor? Because of flex. Because of the nature of the pad it will ride over the texture of the floor. If it rides over the texture of the floor it will also ride over the edges of the floor as well making the edges of the tile pillowed (not normally desired). There is one other problem with these types of pads.

Any given stone is going to have variations as to hardness in any single piece of stone. As youre working with these pads if youre not careful with your head weight what youll do is cut out the soft parts of the stone and leave the harder parts giving you a textured appearance.

I have worked/tested with these types of pads quite a bit. Do they have their place? Yes I think they can be used in some applications, i.e. on textured stones you dont want smooth and maybe some commercial stone maintenance and concrete. I have also had to go back and redo work that we used these types of pads on. Yes they are too good to be true. When it comes to doing stone restoration, maintenance and care; you cant replace diamonds not yet. I have to agree wholeheartedly with Patrick when he said, I'm sure someone would think that is okay but I wouldn't. If you want a floor to look right, youve gotta do it right. I am always looking at ways to tweak the system and make it better. These types of pads would be nice if we can get them to work more consistently in more applications. Were not there yet but were working on it.

By all means I'd love to hear what others found also.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy