The Black and Decker WP900 is a great value at $40 new, for a dual-action/random orbital polisher. It’s hardly a professional level tool, but it’s absolutely all a hobbyist needs to buff a good scratch out here and there without getting tennis elbow.
The only real problem with it is that it uses cheap elastic bonnets instead of nice velcro pads, and you can’t shell out $12 a pad to Chemical Guys for cheap elastic bonnets!
I’ve seen a bunch of other people make this mod, but none seemed quite as polished as they could be, so I took my own whack at it. It’s pretty simple, you just do this:
Really, the only trick to this is that you want the right hook tape to match what the pros use, and the closest match seems to be this “Industrial Strength STRONG” 2″ wide tape from Velcro. I bought mine at Lowes for $10.
- Rip off the OEM 6″ pad. I have a half-sharp putty knife I use for 3D print removal and that worked awesome to get a nice clean cut right at the plastic.
- Lay down your velcro. I started with a full-width piece, though doing it again I might back off half an inch to better center the middle piece.
- Trim around the edge with a nice sharp utility knife.
One last touch I did: I used a silver sharpie to mark the lengthwise ends of the tape on the side of the plate:
When you’re peeling off a polishing pad, if you do it from the side and tear across the velcro, it has a tendency to peel the velcro off the backing plate. If you do it from the end with the grain of the velcro, there’s never a seam to lift up at. Hopefully as the glue on the velcro sets, it’ll stick better to the plate than it does now. But if not, this will at least let me avoid tearing the velcro off with the pad every time I change them.
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