[thesound]

From Caswell's Online Polishing Manual:

BUFF RUNNING SPEEDS
For best results your wheel should maintain a surface speed of between 3600 & 7500 Surface Feet Per Minute. (SFPM). The higher your speed, the better and quicker your results.

Let's do some math:

1/4X6= 1.5.........1.5X1,725rpm=2,587SFPM
1/4X8= 2............2X1,725rpm=3,450SFPM
1/4X10=2.5.........2.5X1,725rpm=4,312SFPM

So going by this table, just to be in the ballpark he's gonna need to run at least a 10" wheel. And even at this size, he's gonna be on the low end of the spectrum. Larger wheels can be had, but let's be realistic: the marginal amount of torque advantage that a 1,725rpm buffer has over a 3,425rpm buffer is going to be eaten up by having to spin the extra mass of the larger wheel, (we're still only talking about 1hp here...), so in the end usable torque is gonna be about the same. Stacking wheels would be totally out of the question. By the time that 10" wheel wears down to 6", he'll be exercising futility.

If this were a money-is-no-object type situation and the guy could afford a higher hp machine that could keep the rpm's stable enough to maintain a realistic SFPM rate then I'd say go for it. When I worked at Delta Faucet we ran 10hp variable speed Baldors and 2,000rpm's on a 16" vented finger buff was prime. Although, there was always some cocky new guy who thought he could be the next Dale Earnhardt of metal finishing who would turn the machine up to 4,000rpm's or so trying to crank out parts faster than everybody else and impress the boss. All the rest of us would just look around at eachother with grins on our faces, waiting for the inevitable. Needless to say, the sound of faucet parts crashing into the inside of the metal dust collector boxes at each wheel was heard quite frequently at that place.