Did I go through the clear?

Appears so. Guys??

Hard to say from the picture, but if the spot you were buffing became lighter, then yes, you compromised the clear.

From where I'm sitting, the
CC appears compromised:

Your photo re-sized:



With "Color" Being Introduced:




Bob

You went wrong by doing too many applications.rops:

If I'm reading your process correctly you tried to cut it down with at least 5 attempts. 2 by hand and then 3 by machine...and 2 with UP and 3 with UC. and I'm a little confused by the "3 applications" and "2 applications" in parenthesis on steps 5, 6 and 7. That's wayyyyy too aggressive in one spot. I also am assuming you used the LC blue wool pad?

My scratch correction is to reduce the scratch with a small piece of Trizact 3000 grit by hand and wet. I wipe dry and inspect and either continue or abandon the attempt. I then simply buff out the wetsanding haze with maybe 2 steps, a cut then a buff out for max gloss.

Get a paint thickness meter and use it regularly. I would compound on a car that isnt mine without one.

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One thing I have learned from being on this forum is that you should always try and do correction with the least aggressive pads and product that gets you the results you need.

Snyperx said:

One thing I have learned from being on this forum is that you should always try and do correction with the least aggressive pads and product that gets you the results you need.

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Always !!rops:

RWC32 said:

Thanks for the replies. So the question becomes. When do you stop? Paul A - I used Foam Hydro Pads. Inspect for what specifically? When do you abandon?

pdqgp - My wife's car. For those who feel the gauge is too pricey, what does a paint job cost?

We took the car downtown and notices it got scratched. My wife was really upset. I wanted her to feel better. Hero turns zero. Should have abandoned much sooner. In my mind, I see Mike with his post-it-note and want to scream. I Just wanted to make it "right". Reality bites!

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Sorry to chime in on questions for Paul, but the answer is unless you know the thickness at that point there's no answer when to stop other than 'gut' instinct, practice/experience or a wild guess. Even a relative measurement before and during is something that will help given we know most clear coats are relatively thin.

Guages are rather inexpensive really. I paid about $110 for mine and love it. Calibration was a snap with the items included and I use it on every vehicle I touch even my own. I log the measurements (usually 2-5) per panel on my intake form. I also spot-check how the finish is responding after I start.

I agree with pdqgp. There are some reasonable paint gauges that are <$250. I suspect I have the one that many have - the Nicety paint thickness gauge, and it cost me $100 or so on ebay. It came with calibration films.

The PTG are very useful in that they -- as Mike Phillips warns -- tell you when there is a "go, no go" situation. It's not going to tell you how thick your clearcoat is, only how thick your clearcoat, basecoat and primer is. As you probably know, clearcoat is about 1/3 of that depth, but it can be highly variable from vehicle to vehicle and probably throughout a single vehicle.

But, the PTG really is only the starting point. After that, moving forward with any correction proceeds based on experience, technique, products and (sorry to say) Gestalt. If you have a scratch that doesn't catch your fingernail, you know from the start that it is superficial, but that doesn't mean it isn't through your already thin clear coat. As others have stated, you always want to start with the least aggressive method and then move to a more aggressive method. When you start with an aggressive method first, you burn through much more clear coat and what's done is done if you've done too much. Then when you backtrack to remove the micro-marring, you still have use an abrasive to clean that up. It's just safer to go from least aggressive to most aggressive. When you do it this way, you can see that if you get more and more aggressive and it isn't correcting what you want to correct, then either your technique is possibly lacking, or you start to realize that you may not be able to keep chasing that defect without compromising the clear coat. The other thing that probably was an issue was the hand correction. I don't think one could keep steady and even pressure by hand, and under your fingers, there's a lot of pressure (potentially) that isn't present when it is uniformly distributed around a pad when using a machine to correct.

As you said, it's a great (but hard) learning experience for you and for the rest of us a great reminder.

With regard as to when to abandon, don't chase any scratch too deep. I feel pretty comfortable with doing a gentle wet rub with trizact 3000 ON NEWISH PAINT. Many times i can gently remove shallow scratches totally and sometimes i simply minimalize them so they're almost unnoticeable. I also use a magnifying glass to inspect. I also try to limit my scratch corrections to those the customer points out.

Basically its eyeball and a feel for the paint.

Everything these guys said is pretty much worth taking and running with. For the already damaged spot, I wouldn't automatically assume that a respray is necessary. Try looking up Dr Color Chips to see if you might be comfortable enough with attempting the touch up. That might be a great (and much cheaper) option for fixing this mishap. I have been using Dr Color Chips and they are pretty good with regards to matching the paint. Hope you are able to get it sorted out quickly.

Matt Hanson said:

Everything these guys said is pretty much worth taking and running with. For the already damaged spot, I wouldn't automatically assume that a respray is necessary. Try looking up Dr Color Chips to see if you might be comfortable enough with attempting the touch up. That might be a great (and much cheaper) option for fixing this mishap. I have been using Dr Color Chips and they are pretty good with regards to matching the paint. Hope you are able to get it sorted out quickly.

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It sounds like you have not corrected a burn through. Correcting a scratch with Dr. Chip is one thing, but trying to blend in Dr. Chip on a burn through and wet sanding smooth is almost impossible, because of how thin the OEM surrounding the scratch is. By the time you get the scratch leveled, you will be striking through the oem paint.

Fixing a scratch with touch up paint and wet sanding is not rocket science, buy fixing a strike through is another.

Whoa, you did way too many applications.


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I would never try to remove a scratch by doing a compound. You are affecting an area way too big. Wet sanding is how you remove the scratch, and you try to keep the sanding as tight as possible to the scratch. Then when the scratch is gone, you do a compound to remove the sanding scratches.

Not sure what kind of car your wife has, but most cars have seriously thin paint jobs now a day. There is no margin for error. Often a customer asks me to remove a scratch and the paint is less than 80 microns thick. So I have to tell them it's too risky to remove and suggest to them to simply compound it and hope it will make it less visible. And when I say compound it, I mean a compound step of 4-6 passes. Not compound until the scratch is gone.