Work small sections at a time
Dual action polishers that use a clutch, like this
PC 7424XP are popular because they're safe. The reason they’re safe is because if you push down too hard on the head of the polisher the clutch will engage and the buffing pad will stop rotating. This will prevent you from burning through the paint and/or instilling swirls into the paint. Compared to a
direct drive tool like a
Rotary Buffer, this tool is dramatically safer in its manner of operation.
For this same reason that people love this style of polisher, (It’s safe and easy to use), you'll find out right away that it also limits you to only working small sections at a time in order to remove enough paint to level out the surface and remove the defects. In most cases you're only going to tackle a section about 16" to 18" inches square or so; usually a 2' section is too large and a 1' foot section is too small, so you'll want to find a balance between working too small an area and working too large of an area at one time.
Since you can only work small sections at a time, this means you’ll need to break each panel up into small sections kind of like Checkerboard or Patchwork Quilt.
That is you’ll take each panel of the car, (a panel would be a door or fender or the hood), and in your mind’s eye slice it up into dedicated sections approximately 16" to 18” squarish or so. Because not all panels are perfect squares you’ll need to let the panel be your guide and break-up each panel into these smaller sections no matter what the shape may be. What’s important is to only work a small section at a time while using overlapping passes to work your product.
The average size hood will be broken up into either 4 sections for a small hood, (Mini Cooper), or 6 sections, (Honda Pilot), or 9 sections, (Ford F150).
This isn't a hard and fast rule as softer or more workable a paint means you can tackle a larger section at a time and conversely, with harder paints, or less workable paints you'll want to
shrink the size of your work area down.
The idea being to match the size of the section you're working to the workability of the paint, which you should discover when you do your
Test Spot, which is addressed in this article. Experience helps a lot with judging work size area but the only way to get experience is to put some hours behind the polisher on multiple cars.
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