Anthony Orosco
06-11-2005, 04:00 AM
We have a Lexus hood that we use for demos and today I purposely swirled the heck out of it to test the new Optimum Compound, a product designed to be more aggressive than Optimum Polish.
Here are 2 pictures of the swirled hood. I used a wool cutting pad at a sharp angle to introduce the swirls. Notice how they take on a 3D halogram appearance? Well these are buffer swirls and many people, pro detailers included, far to often mistake "halo-scratches" for swirls and they use far too aggressive methods to try and remove them.
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/3743/swirls3jb.jpg
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/4504/angleswrls2fb.jpg
I used the Optimum Compound with a foam orange pad, setting my rotary between 1400 and 1200 rpm's.
This step alone leveled down the paint and replaced the heavy swirls with light swirls.
To remove now the lighter swirls I switched to Optimum Polish and a blue polishing pad.
After this step I switched to a ultra fine finishing pad (should of went with a fine finishing pad first but the heat was getting to me) and again I used Optimum Polish. The reason I should of used a fine pad before the ultra fine pad is that a few super fine swirls remained and one more step would of fully removed them, but again they are so light that you can't really detect them.
Here is the hood after being buffed, there is no wax or fillers used on the hood.
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/8359/aftr8xt.jpg
My key to removing swirls is something you should all remember, especially pros, always remember and practice "the finer the pad and product the fewer the swirls"
Well thank you and this looks like a very nice forum that is just getting off the ground, best of luck to you all.
Anthony
Here are 2 pictures of the swirled hood. I used a wool cutting pad at a sharp angle to introduce the swirls. Notice how they take on a 3D halogram appearance? Well these are buffer swirls and many people, pro detailers included, far to often mistake "halo-scratches" for swirls and they use far too aggressive methods to try and remove them.
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/3743/swirls3jb.jpg
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/4504/angleswrls2fb.jpg
I used the Optimum Compound with a foam orange pad, setting my rotary between 1400 and 1200 rpm's.
This step alone leveled down the paint and replaced the heavy swirls with light swirls.
To remove now the lighter swirls I switched to Optimum Polish and a blue polishing pad.
After this step I switched to a ultra fine finishing pad (should of went with a fine finishing pad first but the heat was getting to me) and again I used Optimum Polish. The reason I should of used a fine pad before the ultra fine pad is that a few super fine swirls remained and one more step would of fully removed them, but again they are so light that you can't really detect them.
Here is the hood after being buffed, there is no wax or fillers used on the hood.
http://img155.echo.cx/img155/8359/aftr8xt.jpg
My key to removing swirls is something you should all remember, especially pros, always remember and practice "the finer the pad and product the fewer the swirls"
Well thank you and this looks like a very nice forum that is just getting off the ground, best of luck to you all.
Anthony