Hey

Haven't posted in a while but had some thing happen a while ago that I thought I would mention. I have a cotton wheel on one of my bench grinders that I use for poishing and it sits by my other bench grinder and belt grinder. Anyways, It caught fire from grinder sparks the other day and I diddn't notice until I came back in the shop 20 min later and it was full of smoke. Just a reminder that they catch fire very easily and can smolder undetected. Also is something most people have at there grinding stations. I now take mine off when I am not using it.

Cheers

Avoiding fire is a good idea, but I keep the polishing wheels in zip loc bags to prevent them getting full of shop crud, because  a 2,000 grit rouge isnt any longer 2,000 grit when its wheel is full of 40 grit crud

Yeah, polishing wheels shouldn't be around anything grinding. Even aside from burning risks, the grindings will embed in the wheels/cloth and mess up your polishing job. 

That's a very good point.

For high level work; every grit size has its own storage tub with the compound and buff used only for it sealed away from the ambient floating grit.

Good call. Didn't think of that.