is it safe to polish over painted graphics
- Thread starter cgrosso
- Start date
Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 6
Not really.
When you buff over them with anything abrasive the abrasives will do their job and remove some paint.
If you're working on a car with a clear coat finish and have blue, green and orange painted graphics, you'll see the color of the graphics coming off the car and onto your buffing pad.
The best paint jobs are the ones where the owner of the car thinks the project through and has the graphics or stripes sprayed on under the clear and then has some extra clear sprayed onto the car.
What happens when you apply the graphics onto the clear, or even onto a single stage finish is as the entire finish becomes filled with swirls, scratches, oxidation and water spots it becomes very difficult to work around the graphics.
For some car projects, I simply buff very lightly over the graphics with a Fine Cut Polish and either a foam polishing pad or finishing pad.
How aggressive I get just depends upon the car and the importance of it and its paint job.
When you buff over them with anything abrasive the abrasives will do their job and remove some paint.
If you're working on a car with a clear coat finish and have blue, green and orange painted graphics, you'll see the color of the graphics coming off the car and onto your buffing pad.
The best paint jobs are the ones where the owner of the car thinks the project through and has the graphics or stripes sprayed on under the clear and then has some extra clear sprayed onto the car.
What happens when you apply the graphics onto the clear, or even onto a single stage finish is as the entire finish becomes filled with swirls, scratches, oxidation and water spots it becomes very difficult to work around the graphics.
For some car projects, I simply buff very lightly over the graphics with a Fine Cut Polish and either a foam polishing pad or finishing pad.
How aggressive I get just depends upon the car and the importance of it and its paint job.
Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 6
I share a technique called surgical buffing in this write-up...
Bumblebee - Testing out the NEW DeWALT DWP849X
For some reason when I look at the new DWP849X I think of Bumblebee
Probably comes from my son being a fan of Transformer movies...
Here you go...
More...
These small, 3" foam pads work really well for buffing around,
Pinstriping paint tends to be more on the soft side versus hard side so you don't want to run your buffing pads over any pinstripes but you do want to buff as close to them as you can. In this picture I'm using an extension to position the pad a little farther away from the polisher so I can more easily see where the edge of my buffing pad is on the panel.
This was a rotary buffer only project, the entire thread is jamb packed with tips and techniques for buffing out cars...
Done...
:xyxthumbs:
Bumblebee - Testing out the NEW DeWALT DWP849X
For some reason when I look at the new DWP849X I think of Bumblebee
Probably comes from my son being a fan of Transformer movies...
Here you go...
More...
These small, 3" foam pads work really well for buffing around,
- Delicate areas
- Thin panels
- Edges
Pinstriping paint tends to be more on the soft side versus hard side so you don't want to run your buffing pads over any pinstripes but you do want to buff as close to them as you can. In this picture I'm using an extension to position the pad a little farther away from the polisher so I can more easily see where the edge of my buffing pad is on the panel.
This was a rotary buffer only project, the entire thread is jamb packed with tips and techniques for buffing out cars...
Done...
:xyxthumbs:
Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 6
