Claying a new car

[Jesstzn]

Abrading is similar to shearing. Just that abrading the surface does the action in smaller steps.

Similar but not the same Ron , look at it this way .. when you shear something its done in one pass and abrading in many passes .. like sanding. Now put it in this light ... if clay in fact abrades the iron filing wouldn't it abrade away the surrounding clear coat first being that the clear is softer that iron? If you have ever sanded a piece of open grain hardwood you will know what I mean. Or pick up a piece of wood that has been out in the prairie and wind blown with sand .... the softer portion of the wood wears away and the harder portion of the grain remains. Same as would happen. Poke a tiny nail in a piece of wood and hammer it in till the head is just above the wood level the cut the head off and hammer the nail flush. Now sand the wood with a very fine piece of sand paper or emery paper and see what happens. If you back the paper with a solid block of wood you may sand everything flat, but clay isn't solid , so what happens is the softer material gets worn away .. the nail may show wear but will become higher than the wood.



Your a logical person .. wouldn't logic presented this way say clay doesn't shear off iron but pulls it out. Also if clay can supposedly shear off or abrade away iron why can't it shear off tree sap? Both sap and iron are adhered to the surface, one is on and one is supposedly in.

 

[Jesstzn]

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you

Sad thing is .. you haven't explained it , you quoted a patent which doesn't mean it works then used an example which was a different scenario and when I asked you about that example you just evaded and said I wasn't capable of understanding.



So explain it so I have something to understand. In my above post to Ron I have explained my theory .. now explain yours.

 

[Accumulator]

I don't want to get caught up is this one, too much like an "internet argument" for my taste.... :nervous:



I post about "shearing" but I really think of it as a combination of that and "dislodging" (shearing off a blob of tar; dislodging or "knocking loose" an iron filing). Reading the patent info hasn't changed my opinion.



I don't subscribe to "pulling" because I don't see how clay, which isn't all that sticky, can pull a firmly-embedded iron filing out of paint if it only contacts the very tip of that filing...let alone with a film of lube between the filing and the clay.



IMO we can't compare claying with pad-and-product polishing as the latter works directly against the surface of the paint whereas claying is buffered by a film of lube (at least the way I do it). Similarly, I'm not comfortable with analogies involving other materials....contamination in/on autopaint might be a more unique situation than one would expect.



I use clay to remove tar/sap/above-surface contamination. It's not always effective enough for me on below-surface contamination, it doesn't always seem to get it all, so I use chemical decontamination for that. The exact mechanisms aren't really all that important to me...guess I just lack the requisite intellectual curiosity about it.



And along those lines, plenty of things that seem intuitively obvious to me can be proven wrong. And plenty of things that I think sound goofy are in fact true. Heh heh, and no..that doesn't make me feel like a dummy :grinno: