Ive seen several of Mike's threads where he hits the entire vehicle with WG Uber Compound and then finishes with WG Finishing Glaze - essentially skipping over the WG Total Swirl Remover.
If you read enough of my posts you'll see patterns. A pattern is where I stress information over and over again to simply educate.
I've been detailing cars as long and sometimes longer than most people still breathing. And as important, I've been TYPING how-to information also as long and in most cases longer than any other "Online Detailer". The written word is powerful and as long as companies like AG pay their server bill, the information endures over time.
Here's where I'm going with the above... one of the things I type about all the time are these two words,
Abrasive Technology
Abrasive technology has come a LONG way in the last 10 years and it's still getting better and better. It is due to the improvements in abrasive technology that enable you to skip a step. In the old days you couldn't skip a step and that's because the abrasive technology was basically rocks-in-a-bottle. So after the compounding step you would have to do at least 2 polishing steps and the rocks in the bottleS would continue to refine the scouring each step inflicted into the paint.
It's simply not like that now days. But you still have to use good products, good brands. I see posts all the time on this forum and in the FB world where someone asks for help because their black paint looks gray after buffing. The gray appearance is micro-marring. When you scratch something CLEAR you turn it OPAQUE. Opaque is a level of whiteness. So when you scratch a clearcoated black finish you turn the clearcoat whitish and this makes the paint look gray.
I have people "try" to argue with me that technique is the number one most important factor when it comes to polishing paint. First - I don't waste my time arguing so they lose on the front. Second, I confident from real-world experience, and lots of it, that I'm right.
But "yes" with good abrasive technology you can compound and then go to a fine cut polish an skip the medium cut polishing step.
See my book,
The Complete Guide to a Show Car Shine -
page 92. I created 4 categories for our industry, (no one else was doing it so I don't mind) and ANY brand of compound or polish on the market today will fit into one of these 4 categories.
1: Aggressive or Coarse Compound
2: Medium Cut Polish
3: Fine Cut Polish
4: Ultra Fine Cut Polish
Uber Compound is category 1.
Total Swirl Remover is category 2.
Finishing Glase is category 3.
Also, Finsihing Glaze is NOT a glaze, as stated above, it's a fine cut polish. Not sure why someone chose the word glaze to put on the label but what I do know is for years now I've cleared up all the confusion it causes.
PDC said:
I found the Ultrafina was too fine to make the leap from the Compound to the Ultrafina without using the swirl remover in between.
Correct. My experience too. I stopped using the 3M system years ago though, everything they make is recommended for use with rotary buffers, not orbital polishers.
PDC said:
And that's the way I invisioned the WG series of polishes. But maybe I'm wrong. Are the WG polishes intended to be a 3-step process - Uber Compound/Total Swirl Remover/Finishing Glaze? Or a 2-step process and you select the Uber Compound or Total Swirl Remover based on how much correction you need, then go straight to the Finishing Glaze - even if you started with the Uber Compound?
Depends on the paint and your skill level. There's something to be said for experience when it comes to the first step - compounding. Things like,
Pad choice
Arm speed
Downward pressure or no downward pressure
Number of section passes
Tool speed setting
If you work the Uber Compound for around 8 section passes with the right pad for the job at hand and get close to all the other important techniques you can work the paint up to near flawlessness and then go to the Finishing Glaze.
Heck the TSR finishes out really nice too so you could go from the Uber Compound to the Total Swirl Remover and then go to your LSP - depending upon the paint and your level of finish quality expectations.
PDC said:
Any pad recommendations with these polishes?
Cutting pads with the Uber compound
Polishing pads with the TSR
Finishing pads with the FG
