This week I had some time and found a fender at the local VW Body Shop. It is a good panel to learn how to maneuver around the corners. My reason for doing this was not how to better handle the buffer but, how to sand/detail the orange peeal out of the finish. The panel was in decent conditions and had a few major "wounds".
The easy part was sanding and took about 20 minutes. It looked like this:
The purpose of this excercise was to understand what it takes to level the paint to an orange peel free finish. Man, was I ever in for a surprise in what it actually takes to attain a perfect, glass-like finish.
To just begin to bring the shine back I started with a synthetic wool bonnet and some Hi-Temp 1000 leveler. I felt comfortable after about 2 applications. I was wrong about that. As a matter of fact, it took another 3 applications with the wool bonnet and leveler plus, another application of another synthetic compound and a foam cutting pad to remove the wool cutting pads extreme marring. Once the compounding was complete I moved on to IP polish and green pads, followed by a thick coat of glaze and Collinite wax.
The results are obvious. My problem is that the amount of polishing it took to muscle the swirls out of the finish is excessive. I started out with almost 7 mm of film build and ended up with between 4-5 mm. I burned right through 2-3 mm of clear coat! :scared
I mean, is it possible to remove orange peel with a machine rather than sanding? I have the idea that it may ultimately be safer and possibly more efficient if the process is done entirely with a foam cutting pad and a good compound. This way deep tracers (sanding marks) are not unecessarily introduced into the finish that need to be muscled out.
Please share any tricks. I'd like to use them for a dark green Passat hood waiting at VW.
The easy part was sanding and took about 20 minutes. It looked like this:
The purpose of this excercise was to understand what it takes to level the paint to an orange peel free finish. Man, was I ever in for a surprise in what it actually takes to attain a perfect, glass-like finish.
To just begin to bring the shine back I started with a synthetic wool bonnet and some Hi-Temp 1000 leveler. I felt comfortable after about 2 applications. I was wrong about that. As a matter of fact, it took another 3 applications with the wool bonnet and leveler plus, another application of another synthetic compound and a foam cutting pad to remove the wool cutting pads extreme marring. Once the compounding was complete I moved on to IP polish and green pads, followed by a thick coat of glaze and Collinite wax.
The results are obvious. My problem is that the amount of polishing it took to muscle the swirls out of the finish is excessive. I started out with almost 7 mm of film build and ended up with between 4-5 mm. I burned right through 2-3 mm of clear coat! :scared
I mean, is it possible to remove orange peel with a machine rather than sanding? I have the idea that it may ultimately be safer and possibly more efficient if the process is done entirely with a foam cutting pad and a good compound. This way deep tracers (sanding marks) are not unecessarily introduced into the finish that need to be muscled out.
Please share any tricks. I'd like to use them for a dark green Passat hood waiting at VW.
