Too much wetsanding??

coltagious

coltagious

New member
Need help here, is anyone here experienced with wetsanding? My car was scratched some time ago and I used touch up paint to fill the scratch before wetsanding after alowing it to dry for a few days.

I used meg's unigrit 2500 paper and 3000 grit sanding block for this work (soaked overnight). Initially, the excess paint was removed to reveal a smooth surface after wetsanding, but the base of the scratch still remains. So i went at it again with the 2500 paper. thinking that i have the area properly sanded, I proceeded to polish the area with my PC with Op compound with orange LC pad. I started at speed 2 and jack up to 5 once the compound is well spread and continued for about 5mins.

After removing the excess compound, what greeted me was not smooth surface, but a strech of wrinkled area over the scratch line. thinking that i have not wetsanded the area properly, i proceeded to use the 2500 paper again and repeated the PC process.

This time, the scratch surface comes out nice and smooth but the wrinkled area now grows outwards surrounding the original scratch area :huh: why is this happenning?? Is the clearcoat on my paint being removed?

I am unable to provide pics at the moment as i could not capture it properly as the damage can only be seen at certain angle.
 
You'll want to work OP for a lot longer. Give it 10-15 minutes to deal with the sanding marks. Don't worry, everything will work out, just keep at it and it will end up looking good.
 
Wetsanding looks like a "leopard" skin. Is that what you meen by wrinkle? If it is still someone shiny and smooth, you are okay. If it is rough and dull, you may be sunk. The only way to find out is keep working the polisher.
 
tubafeak said:
You'll want to work OP for a lot longer. Give it 10-15 minutes to deal with the sanding marks. Don't worry, everything will work out, just keep at it and it will end up looking good.
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Hi tubafreak, ok, i will use the compound (op) and give it a longer working time. What about the speed? still work at 5? thanks for helping man!! :cheers:
 
PEI Detail said:
Wetsanding looks like a "leopard" skin. Is that what you meen by wrinkle? If it is still someone shiny and smooth, you are okay. If it is rough and dull, you may be sunk. The only way to find out is keep working the polisher.
Click to expand...


Hi, PEI detail, sorry i dun quite get the part about "leopard" skin, the wrinkle is rought and dull though. How do I keep working? like what tubafreak says?
Thanks for helping!! :cheers:
 
say something more about this "wrinkle". the leopard skin look is the variance between sanding haze on raised portions of the paint like orange peel and slightly lower levels appearing more smooth after wetsanding. the real key for me is taking the touch-up down to the appropriate level, and the rest is an exercise in polishing out the haze.

if you've searched online and found photo essays and videos re: wetsanding, then check the still shots and that's the leopard skin effect. hopefully this is what you're talking about with "wrinkles". first time I did this and saw an overly drastic effect on my car I freaked out. trying to polish it out with a pc didn't calm me down much, and I'm talking about optimum compound on a yellow and orange propel pad. so I learned some valuable lessons about my rotary. I even created and corrected holograms over one of those first attempts.

assuming you're in a similar circumstance and are using a reasonable cutting pad and good polish, dial six on the pc and expect to work it for a while. if you've been keeping the speed down, you're going to see serious improvement dialing it up a notch. makes the pc worthwhile. four inch pads are another option to exploit your pc for this kind of stuff.

for the record, I've only used megs 3k grit finish paper and have a 2k grit sanding block.
 
Sorry I didn't clarify--Marko helped.
It can take up to 20 passes to restore wetsanding marks. Since you are worried about paint quality, keep working it till you get it back--it can't get worse.
 
coltagious said:
Hi tubafreak, ok, i will use the compound (op) and give it a longer working time. What about the speed? still work at 5? thanks for helping man!! :cheers:
Click to expand...
Work it in for 10-15 minutes, moving the pc a few inches around every second. Speed 5 works but you would probably benefit kicking it up to 6, it will take your hands a while to get used to that kind of vibration but it really helps the effectiveness of the product. When you're done you will have some hazing that you'll need to polish out afterwards, a polishing pad with Optimum Polish, if you have it, would clean it up nicely.
 
To Marko, PEI Detail and tubafreak, thanks for the valuable advice. will try out what you guys have suggested and post an update once I get the chance to work on it.
 
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