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what is polish?
- Thread starter Oil
- Start date
"Make no mistake, paint polishes do remove fine layers of paint or clearcoat."
From the guide. My paint isn't in bad condition with water spots and swirls, but there are many hairlines. So a fine polish may help. But where do swirls come from, like in the carmax thread.
http://autopia.org/forum/car-detail...carmax-restoration.html?highlight=restoration
Did the guy bare down too much with the rotary?
It is better to accept the paint than creating swirls
From the guide. My paint isn't in bad condition with water spots and swirls, but there are many hairlines. So a fine polish may help. But where do swirls come from, like in the carmax thread.
http://autopia.org/forum/car-detail...carmax-restoration.html?highlight=restoration
Did the guy bare down too much with the rotary?
It is better to accept the paint than creating swirls
Setec Astronomy
Well-known member
Swirls are induced in clearcoat rather easily (unfortunately) and usually come from abrasive wash media (brushes or other) and/or grinding dirt that is on the car into the paint during washing or other contact (leaning, rubbing,etc.). It can also come from dirty polishing or buffing media (pads, towels).
Swirls in clearcoat are going to be a fact of life, so you have to accept them to some degree as they will always come back on a car that is driven, washed, etc. You can remove them, but yes, you are removing paint with them, so it's best to develop techniques that minimize the reintroduction of swirls. As far as the "carmax" thread, that was probably a dirty pad on a dirty car, or just to aggressive a pad/polish combo that wasn't broken down all the way or not followed by the appropriate finer steps.
Swirls in clearcoat are going to be a fact of life, so you have to accept them to some degree as they will always come back on a car that is driven, washed, etc. You can remove them, but yes, you are removing paint with them, so it's best to develop techniques that minimize the reintroduction of swirls. As far as the "carmax" thread, that was probably a dirty pad on a dirty car, or just to aggressive a pad/polish combo that wasn't broken down all the way or not followed by the appropriate finer steps.
Thomas Dekany
New member
Oil said:Following the three steps: clean, polish, protect
Cleaning is removing dirt. And Wax is providing protection.
What is polish doing?
Is it removing paint?
Both cleaning and or removing. It depends on the polish/pad.
the other pc
New member
Your question brings up a dirty little “secret� in the detailing industry. There is no definition for the word polish. There’s quite a bit of “common usage� but any company is allowed to use the word for any product they sell, no matter what it does.Oil said:...What is polish doing?...
There is no standardization and there are no common meanings assigned to terms in this industry. There is no industry association or governmental standards organization to assign definitions. It’s a free-for-all.
Different companies use the same words differently.
Since two products from two different companies can heave exactly the same title on their bottles and perform completely different functions, you can only compare specific products, not general names.
Meg's uses the terms glaze and pure polish interchangeably for products that contain conditioning oils and/or fillers. Some Meg's products labeled as polishes also contain fine abrasives and they also call them cleaner/polishes.
Zaino and NuFinish call their synthetic protection products polishes. Other companies call products like theses sealants or even waxes.
Poorboy's Polish with Carnauba obviously contains wax and they say it " REMOVES OXIDATION, HAZE, FINE SCRATCHES, SWIRL MARKS, SAP,TAR, BUGS, OVER-SPRAY, OLD PRODUCTS and more!" That sounds like a cleaner with fine abrasives but they also says it's " NON-ABRASIVE". Then again, a lot of companies say their product is "non-abrasive" when they really mean, "yeah, it's got abrasives but they're really fine so we don't want to call them abrasives."
Around here, it appears that most people consider a polish to have fine abrasives, possibly combined with chemical cleaning agents. That’s reasonable, but it’s not universal.
You need to understand what the companies whose products you choose to use mean by their titles and what functions their specific products perform. When looking for new product to try you need to understand what functions you intend to perform so you can choose products based on what they do, regardless of their “names.�
I know it’s stupid and confusing but that’s just the way it is. You can blame it on wax companies’ wanting to out-market each other rather than work together to inform the customer.
PC.