What are swirl marks?

B

BoxsterCharlie

New member
This is a dumb question, probably...but I'm wondering if I've been "getting it all wrong" for quite awhile. I always assumed that I never, ever had swirl marks because I never touched my car with a rotary tool or polished in little circles.



But what has been getting to me lately are what I call "microscratches." Little tiny straight marks, maybe a half inch long, which show up only in bright light (especially florescent). They seems to sparkle out of the reflection spot in a radial pattern. Seems a real fresh coat of SG or P21S will hide most of them, but then after a little while they are back...



Are these swirl marks, or something else? They are the only thing holding my cars back from perfection, and if they are simply the "swirl marks" everone talks about then I should be paying more attention!



Thanks,

Charlie
 
Yep, those would be swirls.



I think what you have been thinking about are the swirls that result from using a rotary buffing with an agressive compound. They leave thin swirls on the paint which you have to come back with the buffer and a fine polish and buff out.
 
I second the notion of the PC. I just tried to do it by hand on the hood of my Stang with Meguires #9 and made very little progress.



Looks like I am living with the minor scratches until I get a PC.
 
sveet said:
I second the notion of the PC. I just tried to do it by hand on the hood of my Stang with Meguires #9 and made very little progress.



Looks like I am living with the minor scratches until I get a PC.
Click to expand...



You can get some of it out with Meguiar's DACP. It says on the bottle that it is for machine use, but I had more luck with this by hand than I did with #9 or Scratch-X.
 
If you do do it by hand make sure you work it for a very long time, to allow the abrasives to break down, so to get a good finish and no hazing.
 
Ouch! Well, I guess now that I know what I've got it will be easier. Time to break out the Dawn and get started again...



I have a bottle of P21S Paintwork Cleanser (which I love), as well as a bottle of Meguiars #7 which I enjoyed using on my previous car. Which one of these should I go with? (I'd prefer the P21S since it is less abrasive) Or should I get some other product?



I should probably also mention that I think my swirls are extremely mild, so much so that my car always gets rave reviews by other Boxster owners. It's just that I may be showing the car at a concours next month, and I know I can do just a little better! :)



Thanks for your comments!
 
If you really want to blow everthing away and start over again, Dawn won't cut it as it sounds like you're using Klasse. Use the paint cleanser once (twice?) or rubbing alcohol to remove it.



To polish out the swirls, you could use a swirl remover product or something with similar cut. What you want to do with the swirls though is up to you to judge their severity. You could always try more SG. :D



If there's only a very few lines here and there and they're sharp and kind of crisscrossing, they might actually be a slight spiderwebbing effect, in which case you can't do anything about them and some is almost "normal"...



PS, the #7 is incompatible under and over Klasse.
 
swirls?

Lowes has the pc for about 109 bucks and it also kicks serious butt as a sander for wood etc.



You wanna see swirls,



shine a flash light on your car in the dark

eek
 
Does any one have pictures of Scratches, Swirl Marks and Spider Web Scratches they can post?



I am talking about scratches which you can see in the reflective light but you can not really feel with your finger or finger nail. (I know if you can feel the scratch, then it’s too deep to be puffed or polished out.)



I will try my best to describe what I think these types of scratches look like.



Scratch: Has a white-ish look to it. Normally running in a straight line but can also be wavy or arced and can be one or many, like from a bush or a hard brush. Visible with or without reflective light but becomes more pronounced in reflective light.



Swirl Marks: Has an arcing or round look to it. Is kind of hazy and normally is in an overlapping pattern. Swirl Marks are highly visible in reflective light, especially on dark colored vehicles.



Spider Web Scratches: This scratch is visible in direct or reflective light. Scratches tend to be of short length and running in multiple directions. When viewed in direct light or reflective light, you can see an array of small scratches which resemble a spider’s web with the light source reflecting in the center of the web. When the surface is covered with these scratches, as you change the location of the reflective light, you see the web pattern repeated in the new location of the reflection.



Does anyone know what causes these small Spider web Scratches?



I would also like to know what products will successfully remove these 3 problems and what steps are involved for hand removal and or orbital buffer removal.



Does anyone have before and after pictures they can post?



Thank you.
 
Here are two photos of the kind of swirl marks that are not made by a rotary buffer, but are actually lots of little tiny scratches (that you can't feel with a fingernail) going in all directions:

Volvob06.jpg


And the same hood after working on the swirl marks with Meguiar's #9 by hand:

Volvoa03.jpg




I think spiderwebbing is actually tiny cracks in the paint or clear coat, but I might be wrong.
 
Yes, those are the scratches I was calling spider webbing. The reason I used the spider webbing term is I think it more closely represents the scratch pattern. I thought swirl marks where those interlocking crescent moon patterns you sometimes see on the side of truck or cars which have been machine waxed at some local drive through car wash.



What causes those scratches? In your pictures, you can certainly see a big improvement after working by hand with Mequiar’s #9.



Can they be completely removed by hand buffing or would it be better to use an orbital polisher, like a PC 7424 (which I happen to have)? What products would you Autopia experts recommend and in what order of use?



Thanks for your time and consideration.
 
This has been a great discussion. I'm definitely with ColaBear that I thought of what I had as "spider webbing." I think the term "swirl" is deceptive because it makes me think of the overlapping round circle scratches caused by hand or rotary (not orbital) machine.



Taxlady, your photos are helpful. I think my paint currently looks like your #2 photo (although I know it is hard to judge reality vs. a picture, but as nice as it looks I still see a tiny bit of swirling). I am using the Klasse twins, and I was psyched when I saw how well the SG reduced my swirls. They went down by 80%--now it is that last 20% I'm after...



Time to whip out the PC (haven't used it in 1 1/2 years because my car was new) and give it a go! I'll start with my P21S Paint Cleanser per 4DSC's comments about Meguiars.



Thanks everyone!



:xyxthumbs
 
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