Hardin H38WVPOLSET 3/8-Inch Radius Stone and Concrete 1/4-Round Bullnose Shaping and Wet Polishing Kit

I followed the advice of a previous reviewer and made a plywood fixture to hold the tiles so I could bullnose the edge and have a guide for the bearing. I used blocks of wood and clamps to hold the pieces that were cut down from the original 12x12 and di all the rough profiling before moving on to the polishing disks. The rough profiler requires a lot of passes. Also, be prepared to get wet. I ended up wearing a rain poncho and rubber boots. In November, it can be cold outside, even in northern CA. It took a while to get used to adjusting the water flow so it was sufficient without being excessive. There is kind of a fine line. I too, like the side handle arrangement, and not the bail handle, although I tried that out first. Once I progressed to the polishing disks, I quickly learned out fast 50 and 100 grit can power through granite. I learned to just skip those and go straight to 200 and later, even 400. After that, you can't skip any grits. The 3000 puts a very high gloss finish on the granite. It looks spectacular. I like this tool a lot. It is pretty easy to use and fun once you get a system worked out. It does get heavy when you've been doing it hour after hour, though. Wear a back brace and take breaks. I'm really happy with the results. Our kitchen looks great. We had about 40 feet of granite that had to be profiled. The store we bought if from charges $8/ft, so this tool has easily paid for itself with the first use and we have more projects planned fo it. Highly recommended.

I made 40 sq ft of concrete counter tops for our kitchen, and used this kit to polish them up to a very nice shine. I didn't really keep close track of my time, but I would estimate I spent 12-15 hrs with it. I'll post some pictures so you can see the results...Pros:- Contrary to what others have said, the D handle assembled just fine and worked well. Remove the hex bolts, install the D handle, and replace the Hex bolts. Maybe I got a newer version, who knows?- The round over bit was great! I had my doubts as to how well this would work, but it really did work great. After rounding the front edge of the counter I waited until I was at 200 grit to start polishing the rounded edge. The 50 & 100 grit were too aggressive for rounding the corners. I set it to the lowest speed for the round over bit, as there were no recommendations included with the kit.- The GFCI worked for me. On one instance I didn't pay enough attention to where my cord was plugged in. It was getting wet, and sure enough the GFCI tripped. I polished with bare hands, and never received any shocks as others suggested. I dried everything out, relocated my plug, reset the GFCI and was back to polishing.- The velcro pads really worked nice. No need for tools to switch between pads!- The on/off switch is nice. It's the sliding/rocking type that prevents you from accidentally turning it on, but turns off with just a light press.Cons:- I didn't have to expose any aggregate on my counters, but I suspect it would take you a very long time if you were using the 50 grit pad included in this kit. I think I would recommend using a more aggressive wheel for this. I have a diamond cup wheel from a previous project that I bought at menards, and this exposes the aggregate in no time at all.- It did not include any instructions or recommendations for polishing with the included pads or round over bit (ie. what speed to used for what grit). I tried different speeds to see if it would make a difference, but didn't notice any. Even on the highest speed it didn't appear that I was burning the concrete. Of coarse I always had water running. I set the polisher to 4 on the speed dial for most of the project and it worked nicely.- The nut that holds the little handle to shut the water supply off kept coming loose. This really wasn't a big deal as I just tightened it back down by hand temporarily until I had a chance to tighten it with a pliers. Since tightening it with the pliers it hasn't come loose again.- During extended periods of polishing, I notice that the speed controller start to vary the speed on its own. Others have mentioned this too. I assume it is because some moisture starts to get into the variable speed switch. When that would happen I shut the water off and let it run for a bit (no polishing anything) so that it could draw some dry air through the back of the polisher. This seemed to take care of it every time.Other Thoughts:- Thing is not waterproof, and I wouldn't expect it to be. Because of that, I was very careful not to drip water onto the on/off switch, or anywhere near the back part of the polisher where the variable speed switch was.- I was polishing my concrete outside in 30 deg weather, and so I used hot water from our laundry tap. This didn't seem to have any negative or positive effects (other then keeping my concrete warm), but thought it was worth mentioning.- The on/off switch is nice. It's the sliding/rocking type that prevents you from accidentally turning it on.- As others have mentioned, the brass water fittings do seem a little cheap. I didn't have any issues with it, however I was pretty careful not to stress the connections based on others feedback

I was originally going to by the Secco kit because it had reviews and there were none for the Hardin. But when I realized there would be a 2-4 week wait for the Secco to ship, I canceled my order for the Secco and ordered the Hardin. I placed the order March 2 and it arrive March 8 with standard shipping. It arrived without the 10,000 grit buffing pad or radius wheel. A call to the company and it was on its way, so no problem. I bought the kit to shape and polish the edges of 12x12x1/4 granite tiles. Worked like a charm, starting with 50 grit pad to get basic shape and working up to 10,000 buffing pad. I had previously had to pay $12 per linear foot to have this work done, so needing 30 feet of tile edge polished made this a great deal. The grinder feels solid and runs well. It comes with both the handle pictured as well as a side handle, which I prefer. It also comes with a ground fault circuit interrupter (plugs on both ends so you can use it with other tools). I like that the water valve is on the underside rather than on top. That location makes it very convenient to operate the water valve with the index finger and the power switch with your thumb. I built a simple fixture from plywood to clamp the tiles at a 30 degree angle and worked on 10 tiles at a time, switching tiles rather than polishing pads. That seems to work best, and makes the location of the water valve and power switch important. Looks like I will get a lot of use out of the polishing pads before they wear out. I am thoroughly pleased with my purchase.

There's a problem with the triggers. The trigger quit working by getting stuck in the on position on the first one so I got another and the trigger feels funny on it too. Haven't used second one yet. Just turned it on and off. Wish I would have just gotten my money back. Everything else was great except the guard was useless so I took it off