follow up wet sanding with foam and optimum compound?

B

builthatch

New member
can i substitute wool and the typical m105 choice for yellow foam and optimum regular compound? i know i'd have to check my work alot more frequently, but i've had such success NOT using wool, esp for spot defects that i feel as if 2500 scratches could easily be removed w/ foam.
 
builthatch said:
can i substitute wool and the typical m105 choice for yellow foam and optimum regular compound? i know i'd have to check my work alot more frequently, but i've had such success NOT using wool, esp for spot defects that i feel as if 2500 scratches could easily be removed w/ foam.
Click to expand...



will take u days of aplications with pad than wool
 
salty said:
How much are you wetsanding? and you are finishing with 2500 grit?
Click to expand...



car has factory orange peel; i had some custom work done and the shop did a really good job of matching the factory peel, but i tend to like my roofs and hoods 'flatter', especially hoods with positive cowling. it's got a hair too much peel texture for me on one side of the hood, and considering that i like a bit of a flatter look anyway, i figured i'd go at it and take some of the peel down.



i was thinking starting with 2500 since i only need some flatness, not complete. optimum tells me i'll be more than able to take care of the scratches from 2k on up with their compound and foam, but im just curious what you have seen.



thanks
 
First wet sanding is always a gamble, personal experience, clear thickness, paint hardness, products and methods used and is the orange peel in the base coat or clear.



While it could be done (very slowly) with OC and yellow foam. As OC isn't very aggressive you might be better off starting with a different compound.



You should try a small area first and see how well it works.
 
salty said:
First wet sanding is always a gamble, personal experience, clear thickness, paint hardness, products and methods used and is the orange peel in the base coat or clear.



While it could be done (very slowly) with OC and yellow foam. As OC isn't very aggressive you might be better off starting with a different compound.



You should try a small area first and see how well it works.
Click to expand...



i spoke with the painter about it and he said i have plenty of room if i want to wetsand it flat, which i don't, just flatter...very confidence inspiring for a project like this. he assured me it's in the clear, which i was 99.9% sure of since if you study it under halogens and fluorescents you can see the slight reliefs of peel. i have 20/5 vision so maybe that isn't normal, but regardless, i can see it. he stated they spray the base flat and then do the best they can to match the texture of the original finish with the clear. if it needs to be perfectly flat, they spray it as flat as possible and then sand/buff. a good example would be new lexus with the waterborne paint- those things come out of the factory with perfectly glass flat paint.



i appreciate everyone's input, including yours salty.
 
Never tried OC, but i have wetsanded with 2000 grit and then touched it up with Optimum Hyper compound With orange pad @ 6 PC (cause i don't have yellow) and everything came out great. I did finish it with Zaino z-pc which probably took out whatever was left but i really did it cause i like the way it brings out the flakes.



Wet sanding is a very nice experience, but just to be safe get a hood or door like I did and practice.
 
sounds to me as your new at this from the ?'s so I'll give ya some advice from someone who has done a ton of wetsanding. As you know wetsanding removes clear. Now that you removed the clear and shaved it down a little to the desired finish is when it gets tricky. If your gonna go with foam remember foam heats up faster so a chance of a burn through will greatly increase. Also remember that the better the sanding job the easier it is to remove. It don't matter if your sanding with 1000 grit or 3000 grit sanding is in the technique.press to hard with either or and your gonna get deep tracers that just won't come out with foam. My suggestion is to use wool. It runs cooler and is safer if there is anything i can do to help please call me. My number is on my website.

barry
 
bufferbarry said:
sounds to me as your new at this from the ?'s so I'll give ya some advice from someone who has done a ton of wetsanding. As you know wetsanding removes clear. Now that you removed the clear and shaved it down a little to the desired finish is when it gets tricky. If your gonna go with foam remember foam heats up faster so a chance of a burn through will greatly increase. Also remember that the better the sanding job the easier it is to remove. It don't matter if your sanding with 1000 grit or 3000 grit sanding is in the technique.press to hard with either or and your gonna get deep tracers that just won't come out with foam. My suggestion is to use wool. It runs cooler and is safer if there is anything i can do to help please call me. My number is on my website.

barry
Click to expand...



Huge emphasis on this: use wool.



Typically, small areas are wetsanded. This means that you are going to be concentrating your efforts on removing the sanding scratches with your rotary on a small area. This means that you are going to be building up heat. For any given amount of correction, wool will heat the paint far, far less than foam will.



Using a compound that is aggressive enough to remove the sanding marks *fast* (like M105) means that you will do less passes, which means less heat.



When you are buffing small surface areas like this, don't just sit there and buff for two minutes straight like you would on a 2'x2' area. Pause often, and feel the paint for heat build up. If you use a diminishing abrasive compound like Optimum Compound, you may not be able to work it all the way til the abrasives are properly broken down without over heating the work area. This is another advantage to using a non-diminishing abrasive like M105.



As other have mentioned, the higher the grit you work up to in paper, the easier the scratches will come out with the buffer.
 
SuperBee364 said:
As other have mentioned, the higher the grit you work up to in paper, the easier the scratches will come out with the buffer.
Click to expand...



And the higher quality the paper, the less chance of random extra-deep "tracer" scratches. The old 3M stuff and the Meguiar's/Nikken Unigrit might both be "2000 grit" but in actual use there was a dramatic difference in the kind of finish they left.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top