M105 Advice Needed

olenderc said:
Dave, I would just like to bounce something off you regarding your statement about removing paint with each failed attempt.

Say you are polishing your hood which has moderate swirls but no deep scratches. You are compounding with 105 but can't seem to get a test spot to finish out nice due to technique or other factors.

Yes you are removing paint/clear which each subsequent attempt, but could it be safe to assume if the swirls are still there (or possibly slight hazing) that you have not removed enough clear regardless to achieve the swirl-free finish you desired in the first place?

I often picture the "jagged mountains" example of scratched up paint. In order to achieve that perfect swirl-free finish, you have to level those peaks until there are no more and you are left with a flat surface.

So in essence, yes each subsequent pass is removing more and more paint, but assuming the swirls are still there, there are still peaks which need to be leveled. This is not to say people shouldn't be cautious when compounding or doing heavy defect removal.

However, am I correct in assuming in an example such as above, that even though it is taking multiple passes to develop a technique for the particular car you are working on, you aren't nearing a dangerously close limit of burning through your paint simply because you are making multiple passes assuming the original swirls/defects are still present?
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You are exactly right with what you've written. It really is a non issue in general if the swirls are still present and you do intend to remove all the swirls.

When I write replies on these forums I try to be mindful that there are a ton of lurkers at all times browsing through the topics and threads on here, some know a little, some know a lot and then some are researching in an attempt to dip their toe in the pool so to speak. When I first discovered these forums, I knew absolutely nothing about the subject.

My statement that you highlighted might be painfully obvious to a lot of the people reading here, and not so obvious to others, so I personally feel it is worth a mention.

Where it would be of most importance would be in doing a test section, as a complete newbie. I remember in my early days of doing this stuff, I would do a test section to try to dial in a process and when it wasn't working out all that well, (scratching my head in frustration) I'd go to something more aggressive in the same test section.

A lot of people might go from something like 105 straight to something like 3M Super Duty when not achieving immediate results with the 105, just to realize that the paint is all scoured now from heavy abrasives. They'll then need to go back to something to clean up the scouring and before you know it, too much paint has been removed. I've personally been through that scenario and I'm sure I won't be the last guy to do something like that.

There's a lot of ways one could get into trouble as a newbie in attempting paint correction for the first time. I see a lot of faster cutting compounds coming to the market all the time, but see less and less of the warning that these compounds are cutting a good percentage of the film build from the paint.

I'm glad you brought up the mountains and valleys thing, and though there are coatings thickness gauges on the market to measure between the mountain tops and the panel beneath the paint, I'm not aware of any device that measures between the base of the valleys and the panel beneath the paint...that is until all the cutting has been done, in which it may now be too late to obtain a safe reading.
 
I'm sorry I should have been more specific when I was speaking about Cameron paint being soft. The BLACK cameros paint is very soft. So soft my partner left buffer trails with a finishing pad while using his rotary. I have done paint correction on at least 20 cameros this past year alone they were all black and all very soft.
 
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