What are these marks from? Suggestions to remove them please?

[Icarus]

Are these marks from dirt in the microfiber pad? Marks are about 1/4" or a bit longer. Can just feel them with fingernail. About 20 of them in the upper panel by the rear door now

Pads are brand new, I blew them out every panel. Used a pad brush too. Car was very clean to start with... I know panel looks dirty but its a metallic flake in the black paint and I had to muck with camera settings to get it to show the marks.
I used a cutting foam pad after and some CutMax but they won't go away...

https://imgur.com/a/eUWxr4m

Thanks for any suggestions/help

 

[Flash Gordon]

Looks like a classic case of overspray

 

[Icarus]

I'm talking about the straight lines in the paint, about 5-6 in that pic...

The speckles are the metallic flake, I'm not worried about that.

 

[Bosko]

They don't look like they are caused by a polishing pad.....
The marks I have highlighted look like they are scratches that were already in the paint.

 

[Icarus]

Yes, that's the marks I'm talking about. They weren't there before.

 

[Flash Gordon]

If the pads were to have caused this it would be in a circular motion.

Probably some idiot leaned against the car with rivets on their pants.
Do you have a teenager (or stupid friends)??

 

[Flash Gordon]

They don't look like they are caused by a polishing pad.....
The marks I have highlighted look like they are scratches that were already in the paint.

Nice photo editing. I bet you could get a job doing this if you wanted to

 

[Icarus]

If the pads were to have caused this it would be in a circular motion.

Probably some idiot leaned against the car with rivets on their pants.
Do you have a teenager (or stupid friends)??

No one was around but one neighbor asking me to fix something. I wonder if the stupid friend was myself?! I didn't have anything in my pockets that would do this other then my keys, and I never leaned on the car, but my luck does seem to suck with anything detail related...

 

[Flash Gordon]

No one was around but one neighbor asking me to fix something. I wonder if the stupid friend was myself?! I didn't have anything in my pockets that would do this other then my keys, and I never leaned on the car, but my luck does seem to suck with anything detail related...

I doubt that happened when you were polishing. My money is on they were already there

The idiot neighbor is certainly an option though. My suggestion there is to cut off all communications.
Don't even wave if you see them outside

 

[Setec Astronomy]

If the pads were to have caused this it would be in a circular motion.

+1. Is it possible the scratches were there before and you didn't notice them until you glossed up the rest of the surface? I think that happened to me on one of my cars, years ago, when I first got into machine polishing.

 

[Tasmania]

Maybe the scratch had a filler type product added to cover it up,
And when you gave it a good clean/polish the appeared

 

[SNP209]

RIDs, random isolated defects. They were there the whole time its just now that the panel is polished they are more noticeable now.

Since you said they catch your nail and won't be removed with cutmax, you will probably need to wetsand to remove them or at least make them less noticeable.

 

[yakky]

+1. Is it possible the scratches were there before and you didn't notice them until you glossed up the rest of the surface? I think that happened to me on one of my cars, years ago, when I first got into machine polishing.

I've had that happen too. The extra gloss coupled with the polish dust filling the crack makes it stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[Icarus]

Hmm, thanks all for the help and suggestions

I have polished this car a few times and only remember seeing them after I tried the microfiber pads, so that's why I thought it might have been them/me. SNP209 seems to have the best idea from what I've been reading here and elsewhere, but I'm not sure on my skill/luck with wet sanding, so don't think I'll try much more to get rid of them. The car is 11yrs old now and a daily driver. It's in good shape but has a defects in the paint from previous owner who owned it (the car was keyed and the fix it paint is pretty bad in spots, I made a post about it before.)

Maybe once I get a new polisher I'll try a light wet sand and see what happens, but I'm in no rush to make it worse right now