How To Achieve The PERFECT Paint Finish (Must Know Tips)

[Music] welcome back to the channel guys on today's episode we're going to be covering color sanding and polishing on this panel for a 47 Cadillac and although we do have a video out currently that's already talking about color sanding and polishing that video versus this video is completely different it's not to say that one is well one is better but as far as comparing maybe a collision style color sand and polish or a quick detail versus something that is show car quality that you can take to shows and actually compete with that's really what we want to dive into today a lot of what we do on this channel has a lot to do with Mike who is behind the camera on me teaching him me teaching my other guys and he's always asking what is the process because that's his background he was in management and he's always wanting that give me a step-by-step and that's what helps pull a lot of the information out of me versus me just saying yeah you just sand it it's it's about all the details of how you sand these panels that gets very critical and understanding what you're looking at as you sand and as Kilmer says making every pass count ever since I've heard him say that that is pretty much our go-to thing when it comes to body work all the way through you're making every single pass count so in today's video we're going to bring Mike in here from behind the camera and we're going to go through every single step that we are doing now versus the older video when we were using orbital sanders and all that this is Mike for all you guys who don't know if you're new really what we were talking about is is just the old way versus the new way of how we're color standing and polishing there is a drastic difference in the clarity so we talk about doing a lot of long long blocking with tubular lights so that way you can see the reflection in the panel and everything that we're going to be doing today is going to be done with round lights so we have a ton of lights out here that are pointing at us in a V pattern to the panel and a lot of these little things may not seem like much and a lot of you guys are going to take this as rambling but all of these things that we're going to talk about it is all these details in order to get you a show car finish I have gone down Rabbit Hole after Rabbit Hole Mike's been there with me the whole time we used to do things a lot differently so that's why you see two different videos up on YouTube but overall he just did a 63 Lincoln yeah I think it was a 63 Great Wall of China it was a monster so he has a lot of very fresh things that questions came out of that 63 Lincoln and now we're doing this big curvy Cadillac in the 40s so we want to talk to you guys about blocks and lighting and all of the little tiny things that he struggled with that we would talk about every week until we got that project done um what do you want to dive into first lighting Products blocks I think the most important thing is kind of figuring out where you're going to start on a car yeah so um for me finding maybe the smallest piece and not starting on like a rear quarter or something and trying to figure out and go through the whole process on a smaller piece just in case it gets messed up or you have a burn the painter isn't going to have to come back and do a whole side of a car to fix it versus just a smaller part with something I kind of came up with on the on the Lincoln I like that especially first since I'd have to repaint it if he burned it yeah um one of the other things is it's all fine and dandy if you guys are the ones who are painting it versus you are doing this for a living and you're polishing other people's work you don't know how many mil thicknesses you don't know what clear they may or may not have used so I think starting with practice panels is for sure like you guys need to start there I was talking with one of the guys that took our class and he was going to start with his firewall and right out of the gate I'm like that is not what you want to start color saying I'm polishing with a firewall's got all these curvatures and all of these struggles start with big flat panels that way you can easily run the rotary over it or the sanding block you don't want to be in in tight little nooks and crannies and not understand why you don't have the finish that you want so pick and choose a nice smooth panel we're doing this nice curvy door uh cone that's on the 47 so I think the biggest thing is I'm the one who's painting the cars at the moment and he's been doing all the color sanding and polishing so he is having to he gets the opportunity to ask me how much Clear what clear and he's he's using the same clear so every car that he's doing he's getting to experience the exact same Clear it's different for a guy who is doing several different cars for several different people that use all kinds of different products all of those things have a different level of shrinkage and also time right because you see a big difference in like say the 69 Camaro we did where that thing we color sanded and Polished it pretty quick to when we finished it and as all those products over time shrink it starts looking like it did when you start it because it starts looking like orange peel when really it's just the product shrinking everything matters especially when we're going to teach you guys how to get the show car quality finish how much time your body filler is dry your primers are dry and I know that's going to be a ton of questions that are in the comments which I try to get to most the comments that we can but really there's no like set time it depends on how much filler how much primer what what product did you use it's all going to change so what did you find with I think something important to bring up too is we're doing this on show cars you're not going to want to do this on your Honda or um great point so so we're going to be going with really more gritty paper than you'd ever want to use on you know a a current car yeah you'll burn through pretty quick so this is just for cars that have we we account for that in the clear taking that all back off so I just wanted to throw that caveat out there because I don't want to get a bunch of hate mail Somebody went out and tried to do it and not only that that disclaimer don't you guys don't want to start with 600 grit on your Honda Civic uh an oem paint job is going to have what did we say we actually measured how many mills were on there they're around three to five three to five mils and we'll put 10 10 mils sometimes per coat depending on how I spray it it just it varies the other thing is that's a lot of times it's a four to one meaning it's a lot waterier of a clear versus what we're using this is going to be on VC 5700 ppgs Vibrance clear and that is a two to one it is a lot thicker you can bury tape lines we are also accounting for how much clear so all of these things are disclaimers these this way that we're going to teach you guys is not the only way there is a variation of things you guys can do but if you have had struggles with maybe swirls or Holograms or scratches this video is going to cover all of those stupid little things to hopefully make your guys's process better there's not a process that I say this is the only process and I really feel that way for all of these cars and all of these different processes that we do from metal work to paint they're I think it's important when you say that stuff too like put some stuff in the comments like what are you guys doing when you guys are doing color sand and polishing for for you guys that are doing it uh and what what works for you we're curious to find out we always like hearing other people's ideas because then we step back and think huh maybe that'll work well in our process as well so not only is it cool for the other people that are watching the videos but it's also good for us to kind of see what everybody else is up to 100 100 and and if you guys have something that will make or break or you don't like by all means put it in the comments um again going back to flow coding flow coding for you guys who don't know that is where you have painted the car whether it be base coat clear coat and you have wet sanded the clear and then you come back so let's just say you did three coats of clear on the car you wet sanded the whole thing again with six or eight hundred grit and then you put another three coats everybody thinks that you have six coats to work with you do not you only have the amount of clear that you did in that one session that one day otherwise when you burn through the top layer of clear into the second layer of clear you will still see a halo around that area that you have burned the other thing is a lot of people think that you get the depth and the clarity from doing flow coding and really I don't believe that at all um it all has to do with your body work it all has to do with you using panel check like we use panel check from like 90 and we check all of our panels to make sure that we don't have any ripples or any body work that got missed and we're talking about a ripple we're talking about something in the panel that is about the thickness of a sheet of paper it is very very minute we are literally looking to make sure that that Reflection from end to end with a long tube light you want to be using a tube light for Bodywork and you want to be using a round light for polishing because now we're looking for clarity we're not doing body work we're not going to be blocking down this whole panel a lot of people think you need this big long block to block clear and really in my opinion you're not getting any real benefit there because you've already done the leg work and the body working and blocking your primer in a specific process so here we are going to be talking about the different blocks so a lot of the blocks that we used to use was a couple different things we would either use a foam style block with holes or even a thicker this is about a half inch thick and although these work you could totally use them we found that we were always chasing these onesie twosy scratches and we weren't really thinking about the small details well some of the small details is that you got this block wrapped in sandpaper and you have grit and dirt nibs that you're sanding out of the clear well that dirt nib makes it into these holes and it's just a dust collector something that Jason Kilmer when he came down had mentioned to me and that was something that gave me a completely different approach because I wasn't even thinking about those things the other thing that I was always using was an orbital sander the other video that we have that we have using a an orbital sander with a half inch interface pad an interface pad is just allowing you to take this d a over a curved panel and not have such a constant pressure where you're going to burn through but doing this this would be used more in the style of like a collision repair for Polish again it's not bad we have a video on it but what we're going to show you comes out significantly better so why would you not use that just a little bit and then come in with a 600 you could you could if you're trying to cut down time but again if if we're talking about consistency everything we do is consistency so how do you know why you may have chased one problem or the other again this being foam is going to hold dirt and as you push down and it's pushing bubbles out it's also pushing all the dirt and impurities into your paint job as well this is a 400 grit sunlight velcro pad that's on here and really the biggest thing here is the deflection the deflection that we have with these pads are never going to get the clear dead flat going back to the comment that you made about OEM versus restoration if we the the reason that I brought up flow coding versus not I like to make sure that we have at least four to five coats of a good two to one high solids clear on the panel that way I am accounting for making sure flash time so flash times is what your TDS sheet is going to be your technical data sheet that data sheet for that particular clear that you're going to use you need to read it and know what your flash times are again that's at 70 degrees is what most of those are tested at so if you're painting and it's a hundred your flash times just shortened up but what you're doing with a flash time is you're allowing the solvents so the reducers that you're putting in the clear to make it sprayable to exit the clear and go out the building that's why you always got to have fan circulating so that way those solvents don't go up to the ceiling and then just sit back down and cause cause solvent pop so but what what I really want to drive home is that this has more clear than people would typically put everybody's always scared of runs and if you're starting out that's fine if you get a run you can stand out your run if you have to but really it's having the amount of clear that you need to be able to start this process with 600 grit would you agree yeah so just to give you an idea I think we figured you when you do it because everybody's different I know when Travis shoots clear he's probably around three to four mils every every coat so if he does four or five that's what you're looking at differently than like an oem yeah yeah so you're talking about the mill yeah I think I said 10 before but really it's probably looking more like 12 mils overall versus something that you only have three to five I mean and and usually when you're going to start an oem finish you're probably not even going to start with thousand grit honestly you might start with fifteen hundred two thousand you're taking off such little material at that point you're just bringing back a little bit of the clarity but you're not going to want to try to cut out Orange Peel on any of the newer OEM finishes because there isn't enough clear there clear is either going to fail because it's too thin or uh bad clear I mean bad prep but a lot of times it's because it's too thin and then if you color sand and polish it now it's even thinner than you started with so when we're when we're talking about evaluating the panel so let's just say that you're a guy who's going to go in and detail a car for a shop that you don't know who painted it you don't know what products they used or maybe you bought the car you have no idea how would you evaluate it you have to break down the shape so we talk about breaking down the shapes a lot in our body working videos now when we're picking a block a lot of times especially for a long block I always talk about a thumb test you need to make sure that it's the thickest block for the shape and the longest block for the shape to be able to get that radius and finish to be smooth now when it comes to color sanding we are just looking to get rid of the orange peel or the shrinkage that you're going to see in this panel and this panel has dried for every bit of a month what maybe probably two months actually yeah I would say probably two months this panel is dried and really this clear to fully dry could take a year wholeheartedly I mean the longer you can wait to do this the longer that this finish is going to stay stand out that way where if you color sand and polish this thing to a mirror today and maybe in eight months and again we're talking about Nitty Gritty like most people's eye is not going to be able to tell the difference but when we're in it every day we can tell the difference so let's talk about the blocks you pick the block uh these are again these are from Jason Kilmer does Jason have a website no website but you can you can find them on Instagram so Jason Kilmer's blocks are in my opinion the best blocks especially for color sanding and polishing not to say that it's the only block to use but as far as the why it's an acrylic block so acrylic is does no deflection to it and he makes enough variation of custom sets so we have an entire box literally an entire box of blocks that Jason handmade he handmade all of these blocks that way we have a variation of shapes so when we put these out here you guys can see that one side is acrylic and one side is foam the foam sides are different even because you have some that are more rigid versus some that are even wider versus the thinner and even different foams and what foam did you like the best out of all these I tend to like the the firmer foam on the back so these acrylic blocks with everything everything kind of has its its place you find you find a couple that you really like and then all the rest of them are just for those other things that you come across every once in a while it's like the many tools you buy in the shop and it's just one of those tools that's handy but you never know when you're going to need it with his kit you can cover all the bases but when we talk about the shape we got nice flat sections right here in the middle and then we have this curve that's going to dive over and although it's going to be curving and sanding with that it still has a tighter radius over here where you're not going to be using this really thick block over here because your contact patch is is rocking it's not hitting all the way versus where I can grab something like this that has a very small it's probably what eighth inch yeah uh with a foam back and really the foam back is going to allow you to grip it and it will curve you know if you guys can even see that it will curve around the whole panel and the contact patch will hit nice and evenly um real quick just because I know there's going to be a lot of people that ask what grits did you use after all this we today you can use every grit that we that they make we are going to be starting with 600. again disclaimer don't use it on your OEM finish but we are going to use 600 and the reason that we are going to use 600 is because it has to have a tooth that's gritty enough to cut it I know there are guys out there that are going to argue this until they're blue in the face that they can get just as nice of a finish but thousand grit and I disagree I just maybe if it's fully cured for a year maybe but I just don't think thousands going to cut it we've done it where we've used thousand we've used 800 and now we're using 600 because it cuts it that much flatter you know you don't want to take I always use these dirt analogies like an excavator you don't want to take down a mountain range with a shovel okay you want to go grab the excavator with a bigger tooth and just level the playing field so that is the thought process behind 600. again if I show a finish that we did a thousand and I show a finish that we do a 600 there is a very small percentage of people that are going to be able to tell the difference I don't even think that our customers can tell the difference but when you go to a show and you are competing you will tell the difference especially over time as it's shrinking so again there's all different blocks for all different shapes you're going to be wrapping these with the the other thing that's nice is so let's just say when you're using this foam block here you've got this thing down here the fact that you have a contact patch now that is a fraction of the size you now have that much surface area that's touching the panel that's less now you don't have that area that's going to be holding dirt nibs and continuing to scratch the panel as you work through it a lot of times you need to be in tune with sanding feeling the Sandpaper cut the Sandpaper needs to always be a fresh piece to where it's always cutting and it's not wore out I'll use a couple pieces to do one little panel just because I can make sure that it's cutting all the way through versus just gliding again if a 600 is wore out it's now you're at a thousand you're not getting the cut that you need one two if you're using a wider block than what you need you have a chance of holding a dirt nib in there that's going to continue to scratch so that's another reason that I like Kilmer's blocks because that contact patch is a lot smaller to where you're focusing on just the panel and if you have music blaring I think I think you can probably agree you've done this long enough now with the Lincoln that you have the feel and guys don't think you're going to get this right out of the gate this takes time this takes practice you have to be in tune and really thinking about it making sure that every single pass that you make counts I think in the beginning you probably wouldn't put music on but now you could put earbuds in and not even worry about it I won't I won't put earbuds in I'll listen to a speaker but I won't listen to it real loud because there's sound that happens with the paper and like you you just hear things it's like another safety net for me as soon as I put something in my ears like I don't have that sense anymore and it's just fill and I can feel things right but the sound sometimes happens before the fill so for me I don't yeah and it a lot of times you can either feel like if a dirt nib gets in there and you knock it out of the clear with that 600 you want to make sure that it's flushing out so in today's example we're going to be using a squirt bottle but really I always like to use a garden hose and or I'll even take like a drip system and I'll crack it to where it's just continually running because I want to make sure that I'm washing out all of the dust dirt you also do not want to be running a Fab shop because our shop is really small and I make sure that when we do color sanding and polishing a lot of times we'll have it we'll have it in a different area or we won't be doing any fabrication that day make sure it's not a Dusty day because those dust particles going around floating if you're doing body work over here and you got a guy doing polish work no matter what you're going to end up with scratches that you didn't expect and when we're talking about the finish that you're going to get with this process the microfiber that you're going to be using to wipe it down will scratch it so you really have to be cautious once you actually get to the polishing part so I want to bring up something else because getting the Finish we're talking about doesn't happen with this it happens through the whole process and with these acrylic blocks if if you still if you've been using something like this and you're used to using a softer or foam Block it's going to go into everything that's on that panel so what I'm trying to get at is if you start using these acrylic blocks and your car is not straight you're gonna burn through because these are going to ride on top of everything that's high and they're not going to touch anything that's low and you're just going to keep taking away the clear from the tops of those things so yeah that's a great there's there's something to be said about using these acrylic blocks yes it gets it completely flat yes you get a mere finish but this process doesn't just rely on this part it goes all the way back to the beginning so I just want to bring that up again that is the whole reason that he makes these videos so good is because he drags all these little things that is such a key thing for somebody who is going to burn everywhere in the car let's say you body worked your car with durablox well guess what don't use an acrylic block to color sand your car use something like the flexible block or a DA because your finish is not going to matter at that point so if you're doing this for a living let's just say and you want to evaluate maybe you take 600 dry and just take the block that fits the shape and just slowly drag it over what you want to be able to see is those scratches go evenly and track evenly through the panel because if you have an area that's low or an area that's high more specifically an area that's high if it's high on the first pass it's the area that you're going to most likely burn through first so you're getting a glimpse you're seeing that how good of the body works so like Jason Kilmer does all of like ring brothers and Ironworks and all these bigwigs for the industry and the cool part about him is he's so used to pivoting for all of these different people in the industry that he uses these little stupid processes where you can take a step back and I guarantee you he knows what's good and what's bad just right out of the gate he can tell you who's a better Bodywork guy so those are how you determine that acrylic don't lie so you brought up watching the scratches something else that I've learned to kind of watch is the texture so as you're taking this down I'll I'll kind of dry my panel off more when I'm first starting if I'm not using some kind of dry paper but I'm I'm looking to see that all this texture is coming down and all it looks like it's the same does that make sense yes so so you you want to see this stuff clean up similar across this whole thing that means you're taking it down the same if you see something start showing up right here and you keep going to get rid of that this Burns yeah so it's very important to watch your texture come down so for me that's drying it a little bit more and really watching that stuff develop and then when I see that everything's nice and even then I can really go to town and I don't have to worry about drying it as much correct so the the Grits that are the most crucial in my opinion and I think you probably agree it's 600 and a thousand so six hundred and a thousand is what we are specifically going to be using the acrylic side of these blocks now although the foam is really nice to hold on to the foam actually Cuts better it grips better than the acrylic because it's contact patch is hitting everything no matter if it's straight or not so if we're making sure that we get rid of all the orange peel completely in 600 600 is the most crucial and I find that you might get a little bit more of the chatter out if you go to a thousand grit with the acrylic as well from a thousand up again you can use the more grits if you'd like to the biggest thing is that we're trying to take all the clear down just to where we need so when he talks about watching the orange peel start showing up so as we start doing this first couple passes with 600 you're we're going to be using guide coat between every single grit the Grits that we're going to use today is six hundred one thousand two thousand and three thousand and you do not have to use those specific grits if you don't want to but we know that we can be very thorough with every one of those grits and get the finish that we need because it's consistency but if you feel that maybe you're going to fall short on consistency then do thousand fifteen hundred to twenty five do whatever it works for you guys so let's do it we're going to get into it with 600 out of these blocks do you have any personal preference that you'd like to talk about on why you may use one or the other these these round dowel blocks are awesome for doing like 63 Lincoln channels on top of doors making sure they're super flat so I've found like when I first started I might have grabbed one of these when I had it but I've found that this is kind of a little too wide and like he was saying it'll start picking up more dirt so I tend to like this kind of width the foam on this one on is a little bit too soft but this is probably what I would start with on this even the foam that Jason makes on these blocks are different like the orange even though it's thinner you would think it has less give but the some of the other blocks has a more firm foam on it so the variation that he gives you I mean some have this some have the other foam and the acrylics in the middle there's a variation of different styles but this is definitely I think probably my go-to as well we got a quarter inch acrylic because this panel does have some curve to it it's about a half inch wide and six inches long let's get some some action action so number one we're going to clean the panel off because we've got uh does that shadow matter on that for the squirt bottle is so we're just making sure that the panel is clean and get in the habit because that's what it all boils down to right is consistency so a microfiber for example these are Costco brand microfibers they are different than Sam's Club you need to look at the thread count of the microfiber the higher the thread count the better it's going to be as far as creating scratches so these are actually something that we would not use in when we get to polishing because it's going to scratch the corners will scratch so fold your Corners in the tags will scratch rip the tags off you spend all this time going through this entire process and you wipe it off and then you find out the tag scratch you're going to be pissed so that is why we always take time to that again we're going to be standing this thing with 600 it's not as crucial right now but when we get to polishing it will be so we have the acrylic side down we cut the 600 here's the other benefit you're getting way more out of your your paper because before you used to use half the paper when you fold it around those foam blocks just to be able to grip it now you're using a fraction of the paper that gets used several times that you can just keep cutting and cutting away we've got 600 on the acrylic block that we picked that's half inch wide quarter inch thick and we are going to be putting even pressure on this block in the center and all of our fingers are spaced out you're going to be tracking through at a 30 degree angle just like you would body work and you'll use different techniques some guys do a longer stroke and some guys will go through with a shorter stroke and I think you like to do the picture frames on these first as well right and I tend to go with a little smaller block on that too just to be safer and control it yeah so picture framing what is picture framing so if you paint a door let's just say or this panel as you go through the whole thing you'll find that even in Collision some guys will actually paint one coat on the second coat they go just shy of their Edge and maybe on the third coat they do so the edge always has an area that's built up of extra clear and then we call that picture framing so in order to get something that's laser straight all the way through all the car the quarters the doors to the fenders and something that does not show anything you have to actually spend the time to go on that edge and work that picture frame out I think we can actually just scuff this really quick and dry it so so you can see something I wanted to mention about that technique you were just doing uh-huh but now you're not doing it anymore oh you want me to got it okay get to work so which one so really pay attention to your fingers you don't want to be pulling your it's mainly your thumb and I don't know if you guys can see it in this camera or not you don't want this thumb coming over your Edge you want to keep all the pressure and everything on this side of this body line so you're not rounding off and burning an edge which in that case you might want to it depending on if you're going to switch your card use your other hand so that way the majority of your body language and your pressure is over your panel and it does not have a tendency to tip over the edge because if you tip that edge even a slight bit more it's going to burn your edges especially if they're sharp so sharp edges are problematic a lot of times we'll make them perfectly crisp and at the wet sanding stage we will get rid of just the very sharpness clear is not going to want to stay on that sharp edge but what I want to show is that we've only gone over this panel just a couple little times so what you're doing is you're you're looking at how it's tracking over here where the clear is built up on the edge you can see a very defined Edge and that's what we're going to work out so everybody has a different technique he's going to have a different technique even that I have I will use this block but I'll make sure that my fingers never cross all the way over and I will just do a really short pattern so here's my thought on that and maybe we maybe you can elaborate on a little more the other reason I like using the smaller block is because I can control where I'm taking material so to me if I have this high and I'm down here it's basically doing what we talked about a little earlier where we're using an acrylic Block in a panel that's not completely straight so I'm taking material from out here and then this is still coming down but this isn't coming down as uh this isn't coming down as much as this is I I'm scared that I'm going to burn here using a bigger block than just controlling a smaller one right here and I think that boils down to making sure every pass that you make counts you need to be watching this texture as you take it down you will also find that even with the panel wet and a hose if you have a nice lighted area lighting is everything in what we do and if you have good lighting even through the water you can still see the texture as soon as it goes flat I stop with 600. I am always pivoting so for somebody with experience versus somebody without experience that matters also when you're blocking or even when you're like razor razor blading out like a clear run you know the block I always have it riding in the center so that way it can pivot down always to the flat area of the panel but where your fingers are is exactly where the block is going to ride even when we do body work I always say there's a lot of guys that have like these massively long blocks and I personally don't see any benefit to a block that is longer than 24 inches long and the reason is is because I prove that when we do our body work and classes that if you move your hand if we take the pins on we use or guide coat and we we run over the panel it even though that panel or that block is a half inch thick acrylic it's only wearing about the distance of your fingers being out it's not wearing that panel directly evenly so again it all comes down to touch how light how much pressure but all of those little things matter so the more you guys do this the better you're going to get um but I will work through the other thing is just a couple drops of soap in your water will help the lubricity as the paper cuts you can just use a Dawn soap it doesn't have to be anything specific but even here I can even see the texture right now even from the lights in the ceiling from the shop above a lot of times if you have a dirt nib you will hear the dirt nib get knocked out and you'll hear a loud a little Screech that little Screech is just getting that dirt nib scrubbed through that's why I think the hose is a little bit better than a square bottle but for this demo it'll be just fine so right there I heard it there was a little tiny just Screech the bird no huh where did my people go what's nice is we've only done a couple passes pretty quick and it's already dead flat all the way through here so now all we have is our picture frame where we're just going to work that picture frame so again we're talking about pressure I'll make sure that I use my other hand over the panel and I will just work just the edge so my fingers need to be running directly up to the edge not over and not focusing so much where my pressure my hand or my arm is out here and just working through it for me it's easier because I'm right-handed to just use my right hand but a lot of times if you just go through give it a wipe you can still see it's barely there again I'm going with the shape you never want to be blocking something uh where it's not going parallel with the shape everybody always says x pattern and x pattern is good but you want the block to be going parallel with the shape in that x pattern something that you can do I don't know do you do this do you do One Direction on the panel I know some guys like to go the other direction with the next grit up so they can make sure they get rid of some of the scratches me I just use the guide coat to rely on where I'm at but it's easier to see yeah but I've you kind of learn to look at the sheen yeah after you've kind of finished the see the difference yeah every one of these grits is going to look substantially shinier you should already the goal is that the reason that we're going to 3000 is that there's going to be a bunch of Critics on here that say I go to 2000 and I start buffing and I get the perfect finish that's that's great you probably have a lot better chance of burning a panel especially on a sharp edge if you're trying to buff back from 2000 with a wool pad and also whether you're rotary or whether your orbital is also going to change there is better Clarity with a rotary than there is with an orbital there is more chance of burning with a rotary Everybody's scared of rotaries but really if you take the time here and sand everything the way that it should be sanded all the way to at a minimum 2500 Grit to 3000 grit it's going to buff back so fast that you don't have to be as scared of the rotary polisher as you were before anything else you want to add on the way I'm sanding or whatever no you're doing great you probably wish I sanded this with the Lincoln huh we laugh and joke but Mike's going to be the one probably doing the majority of this car too I don't know you're you're ending up in The Fad though so this is a very sharp body line too Yep this is way sharper than I like I can see it better down here but I can't see it over the top 600 is done it only took what five minutes probably do that little area one by one give or take and next step is going to be this Edge is so sharp that I went just a hint to where it's not quite all the way out and I'm going to take it the rest of the way with thousands again that's a Thousand Cuts really good but the difference between 600 and 1 800 works really good you almost can't tell the difference between six and eight but 600 by far bigger tooth you're going to cut through faster and get to flat but you're not going Beyond you don't want to take more clear than you need you the goal is that we're leaving the most clear on the panel that we can that's really the goal also something to think about that's kind of funny is that when you talk about UV protectants and we pick clears that have UV protectants as the clear dries it goes to the top of the surface what do we do with the clear we're taking all the UV protection out when you color sand and polish so just food for thought but uh guide coat this is how we're going to ensure that all of these 600 scratches are completely eliminated is with this um I will tell you that not all guide coats are created equal this one is merca and they do have a white guide coat as well say you're doing a black car you would use white guide coat this color I think you could use white or black the other thing is that Mike found that if these are older especially when you're using them for body work you need to have a dedicated one of these for just your color sand and polish work because if you're using body filler and you've got all the body filler dust in there it might not matter right now in 600 a thousand but it's going to matter when you get two and three thousand because it's such a refined scratch you are just implementing more scratches he kept calling me why am I battling these scratches we found out it was the applicator of the merka so maybe you use a rag with that and something else what's that you finish with a grit and then you go and get lunch and then you come back and go straight to put your guide coat on your panel don't do that make sure you fill your panel oh yeah yeah you can fill the dust particles with your hand so I even went a step farther and I would start putting the guide coat on I'd sprinkle it on and then start using my hand because I could feel yeah your hands get black or they get white you don't like to do it but you can wash it off pretty easy um but it's just safer and you're not getting those big scratches you would get from a piece of dust or something in that yeah applicator yeah a lot of times have air on hand like we have an air hose right here and we can blow it off use our bare hands so if you got gloves on yeah gloves are great but I can't feel through a Nitro glove the dust particle just between him touching it and now we're gonna have dust particles that land on this that we can't see so you have to get as you get into the higher grits you just need to be conscious of those things that can happen did your wool pad lay out in the body shop all week because think about that if we have just a few minutes of this panel sitting here dust particles get there if you have a if you have a rag fall on the floor you got dust particles on there where did you set it did you set it on a nice Rusty table like we have here or did you set it on something that's clean again it's just it's the small stupid things that could be a game changer for you so we are going to apply this murka you wanna yeah you can hear the scratch yeah all right the other thing I was saying is that merka there are different guy coat manufacturers but I find that murka is ground finer so it works better for the finer scratches so like we used we used to use carborandum as well and the carborandum didn't work near as good as the mirka did for the higher grits so that's why we use the murka anywhere that you have texture still this thing sounds horrible on here it's tearing it up just use your end dude yeah we'll use the rag just use your hand I'm not using my hand come on man that don't work no oh I need to drive rookie come on dude I'll do it be one with the guide Co oh God you get your hand man that stuff is so gritty there's a lot of crap in that yeah um again if you have any area that is not completely blocked flat the clear that is shining for example in the Border here around the door there is a small area that is still shiny and the clear so it won't stick to anything you don't want a Geico after or before you sand it because it won't stick so we've ditched the 600 at that point we're going to be using the same block for a thousand grit next so again we're using acrylic block for the Thousand grit after a thousand grit I will flip the block over and I'll use the foam side I'm using the foam side of this particular block because it is a very firm foam the firmness in the foam will help the cut of the 2000 and 3000 grit so we're going to show you guys this part with the Thousand just to show you how the guide coat is allowing you to see where your sand scratches are still left so I'm just going to run over it a couple times so that way you guys can see the scratch that's still in there so something in this stage that I like to use is either a headlamp or one of these small I don't even know what these are called they're sunlight sunlights um it's for check and paint but you can get these at Harbor Freight too but it makes it a lot easier to see the guide coat in that in those scratches just a little tip so you can see the sand scratches where they're still left where they're deeper than the Thousand so you're going to want to go until you take all of that guide coat off the other thing you can do as you work through a panel is start thinking about how many passes did it take for me to get all of that off and then start becoming robotic so if I'm going to work from one end to the other where's my squirt bottle I'm going to keep this thing wet or I can do that for you oh yeah hey hold that and I'll start counting maybe it takes so like right there it took about eight passes to get that to fully clean up so as I'm having my travel I'm I'm going to have overlap within this six inch block so if I move a couple inches and now I do the same count I'm overlapping it still with thousand grit you're not going to be able even though the guide coat is removed I think you would agree you still have to sand it a little bit more the guide coat is your guide as to where you've been picture that as your roadmap so be more thorough so if you know it takes eight passes to get rid of the guide coat then barely move over don't move over six inches and then keep going you're going to have scratches everywhere so make sure you're removing all the scratches as you go so we're going to get in the habit of counting eight times move over two inches count eight times everybody's gonna have a different amount of times until they move because it's all dependent on surface pressure how much you're pressing right here you can hear something there flush it out the color is really starting to pop yeah I always like to think about this also as whatever grit that you're using if if you went over the panel eight times the next time you upgrade your grip you're gonna double it the next time you upgrade that grit you double that every time you're going up in grits you need to be standing twice as much to make sure you're getting rid of that finer and finer and finer stretch so what is it about edges what do you want to know you just don't I I'm never as thorough on edges as I am everywhere else sometimes I even have to re-guidecoat just the edge and make sure that I've really hit it I think a lot of it is that we get uh we get lazy you know so we do all the easy part right the big flat open area I would also suggest that you do all of the hard to get area first with every single grip also don't do the whole Dane car do a door all the way through and if that means well I guess I would say you can do the whole car in that Grit but until you've got a few cars under your belt I would not do that I would do one whole panel start to finish maybe you don't have to polish it but get all the Grits done because some well you do need to polish because I would say that if you sand an area that maybe you weren't thinking about the polishing aspect of it maybe can you even get a polisher in there to polish it you only want to be sanding where you can polish so that's kind of the biggest thing I know guys like Rob Paddock who he even does all the louvers and all those old dues and burgers and stuff that he does he's super thorough but he knows where he can get that polisher so only sand where you can put a polisher for me the good thing about just doing one panel at a time is I Didn't Do It on the Lincoln when you're first starting out you only know what you know and you'll find out that each panel you do you figure something else out yeah so if you go around the whole car and you you end up missing something then you have to go back and redo a bunch of work so when you're learning or even when you're trying to figure out if it's a a different car and you're trying to figure out the characteristics of how this paint's gonna cut it's always good to just go do one all the way through and then do the next you're always going to be figuring out something yeah so very true there's like just when you get so close there is just a hint of guide code but it just stays there so that's where you're making sure every pass counts because if you sit there a thousands or a thousand are still pretty abrasive you're gonna go right through that edge you literally want to make sure you are going and the second that you see that black go away you are no longer going in that area that's where you can see you like a shorter block but me I'm really doing the same thing because my fingers are here right at the very edge but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty you don't want to get all the way to the end think about how long this would take on a Lincoln oh I know how long it takes on a Lincoln you're doing uh so let's tell them I mean for you guys that are new to this and are learning how many hours can you expect to take on a car roughly you think well that was just under 200 200 hours so and it didn't have a roof this isn't including the body workering this is not including the paint it's just this process just color sanding and polishing we're going to do just this area only so that way we can show you guys the comparison of our light on using acrylic versus what's here and then we'll also show you some of the Halos around these molding holes that we didn't take the picture frame out of anything else you want to add in here nothing nothing just those edges those edges will screw you in the end you will not see them until you get completely done and then you're like crap should have spent more time there I think the funny part is there's just so many people that are gonna have a critique and critiques are grid but think that there's a shortcut here's something that we have found here consistently with this shop is that no matter what stage you're in if it's metal work if it's body work primer paint as soon as you start skipping some of these steps and thoroughness it's not a matter of if if it's going to bite you it's a matter of when so just do I always say how you do one things how you do it everything or how you do how you do one thing is how you do everything yeah how you do one thing is how you do everything and really that's kind of why we're showing you guys what we're showing you because there's a lot of dumb little things that we took a lot of years to just stare at and figure out why you know you go to the show you go to SEMA or whatever and you see those cars and you're like how it's kind of funny right it comes full circle because I used to stare at these cars going there's no way how did they get every single scratch who did it Jason Kilmer so that's why I'm not going to argue with the guy that's what he says we did it we practiced it and now you guys have it at your fingertips so it's kind of cool so I'm I went through short passes this way and I was making sure that I was being thorough and I like to just go a little bit above and beyond with thoroughness and instead of having a very tight pattern when I get all the way through it and I think I've gotten the majority of it I just like to come back through a little bit longer stroke stroke and just make sure that I've gotten all of that guide coat from that out so that way I can dry it off and see it I always make sure in between every grit and between putting guide coat on that I dry it I blow it off and I look for those onesie twosy dark scratches that maybe got missed because if you don't get them in every grit they'll be there at the end waiting for you and then you have to go back and figure out what grit you missed it in to be able to remove it agree agreed so what would you say the ideal place for light placement is to your panel great great question um it's always going to be on the opposite side of where you are so if you got the panel in front of you I always like to have the light like a V you need to see the light like a V bouncing off into your eye that way you can see it if the light is just behind you a lot of times if the light's right over you everybody thinks that that's the best and the problem is when you get to the Polish part even the sanding part when it's directly over you you don't see the reflections and why is that it's because a scratch is a v in the panel and if the light is directly over it you don't have any Shadows on a microscopic scale so if you put The Light low and and farther away like right now we have this what 10 feet away and it's reflecting in so we're going to get more of a shadow it's going to show more of the scratches because of that distance so lower is better and on the opposite side of you so you can see more especially when you're polishing you will think that it's perfectly clear up here and then you'll put it in the sun and you'll realize real quick that you got Holograms and haziness but if you get the right lighting I don't recommend fluorescent we use a LED light and we got we got four lights up there we only have two on right now but lighting is going to be the most important thing you guys have not the blocks not the paper nothing else if you can't see it yeah you can't get rid of it yeah you don't you can't weld anything you can't see you can't body work and you can't see you gotta have the lighting right there's going to be guys that say well I can go down and get this other one that's cheaper well you can and that might work sometimes but with everything you kind of get what you pay for again ripping the tags off we're starting to get up in a little bit higher grits I'll start keeping my edges in wipe the panel off the other thing is all of these towels are brand new in the package we don't wash them we don't reuse them call me wasteful but when people are paying this kind of money for a car the last thing I want to do is give something somebody paid good money for in its subpar I want it to be where they can't find anything because we took the time and the effort to make sure it was that good so here we'll get the air [Music] so now I can check I can use the light and I can get down here and I can look and I'm I stand it directionally so although it's the same direction that I stand at six hundred thousand if you had done it the opposite crosshatch pattern if you weren't thorough enough you would see the patch pattern the other direction so here I have all of the picture framing completely out but there is very hints of it up here and then a little section down here so I'm going to bring the Thousand grip back in but what I'm really looking for here is bigger excessive scratches yeah so again lighting right if I'm over here there's scratches here that I can't see but the light we have on this side for lighting us you can see certain scratches differently you always have to move you don't you don't body work your car use like 90 down the panel to check the panel and you don't get you got to get down on the ground and look at all everything from rocker to the ceiling of the car and make sure everything has been seen on the Lincoln I would have a light high and I would see but as soon as I would put a light low and shine it up the panel it would show me something completely different yes so moving your lights around is super important like we don't really have to move the lights around because we can move this panel to look at it but if it's on a car move your lights around high low yeah front back and then you'll really be able to see everything the other thing too is I don't know if you guys see this if you have any paper that's like we're only doing an area that's this big this thousand grit is trashed so think about that be mindful of that grit and what it's doing so this paper I'm going to ditch and I'll make sure that I go over everything and ditch it man Travis hates paper on the floor I do um soaking your paper too before you five minutes ten minutes before you're gonna start sanding put your paper submerged in water and it will make all your Corners nice and soft because if you just jump to a dry piece you may have scratches left from the corners of your paper so here we got a nice get in the habit of listening to your paper I can hear right now this has a way way better scratch and if you're already knocked down with thousand having a little bit grittier thousand is going to take that last little bit out of the panel the Geico has to be completely off every time or you have no way of guaranteeing that you have all those scratches out either we have a lot of people bring up how they can't get rid of all the scratches when they finish a color sand and polish and would you agree it's probably because they're not being thorough enough in each Grit it's either that or it's dust in the pads or they set the pad down on a dirty table or something it it's always amazing I mean we spend all this time color the fact that you spend the time color sanding a polishing cart to begin with why not just be very mindful all the way through and get a much better product because you're already doing the work you might as well do it the right way yeah okay I like the right way in your hand list though nope how gritty that is horrible he's doing it you just got done saying you just got done saying you'll do whatever it takes to get the customer for the best and finish yeah my hands are going to be trashed it ain't that bad it really does get it into everything it does this is just it's messy all right don't be mad dude it comes up so the only we're going to do this exact process repeated 2000 grits going to be next the only difference is we're flipping the block over to the very firm foam side it's not a very uh flippable or uh it's not a very flexible foam it's very dense so it does have you're gonna say it wasn't very flippable yeah I don't know Kilmer you need to change the blocks don't make them flippable so again we're gonna do 2 000 grit and 3000 grit we're going to guideco in between and we are going to use the foam side for all of that um we're not going to show you guys that because you guys will be sitting here for even longer time watching that but it's real time do every single one of the steps double the amount of the last Grit and then we'll bring you guys back and we're going to start polishing see you then we've gone through this whole area now with two thousand three thousand and now we're going to start the polishing as far as the panel goes if you've got a small panel either have somebody like Mike hold it or we use these uh springy clamps so you can get a homie Depot but having it on the towel with those clamps will help it from zipping it off the few things that I want to talk about is what polish do we like there's really two kinds of polishes that we like and the mcguiars 110 and the mcguiars 210 is the only polish that we're going to use for this demonstration oberg Car Care also has good polishes I would say they're a very comparable polish to this so if you're looking to support the small guy look up oberk car care and otherwise you can get McGuire's Harbor Freight you can get it a few different places but it's easy to get it's um it's been tried and tested so we put it in these little squirt squirt bottles that are easy to just get on the panel they're easy to put in a pocket or a apron but we're going to be using wool pad first I have a rotary again you can use orbital but I find the nice part is if you've gone all the way to 3000 Grit the amount of polishing that you're going to have to do is very minimal it's going to help a ton versus going to like 2000 grit can you polish it sure this is I think faster and I feel like you're taking off less material this way even though you're sanding it but directionally uh it's always going to look like a cat fight in your shop if you're using a brand new wool pad which we are every car we do we get a new set of pads you can clean them you can wash them but I find that it just works better it's kind of a small cost really for the amount of Labor that we put into these things because you have to wash them yeah well you got that nice fancy washer I know it works really good so there are uh what do you call that thing uh leak was that Lake Country Lake County they they make pads and stuff too but they have a it's a it's a wash thing it's a five gallon bucket you know what I'll just show you guys I'll do some b-roll of it put it in there so um you got to season the wool pad seasoning it you do not want to have this thing any areas of dry when you're starting to polish this so I use a lot more polish in the very beginning to get things lubricated all the way through so we're going to start with the mcguiars 110 is what's in this bottle and we're going to use the wool pad on a rotary there's a lot of guys who have very specific feelings about whether you put the wax on the panel or the wax on the Wheel I don't really care I put it on the car do what works for you guys I don't think it matters some guys if you think it matters then why does it matter put it in the comments because I'd be curious to know what does matter is the direction of the polisher so you're always going to have the polisher barely you lay it flat and you're barely going to be tipping it up on edge that way you're using this area of the polisher itself so you always want to start with the polisher all the way down this one's a Milwaukee I forget what RPM this thing actually goes to when did they make that thing 1972 yeah it's old I've had this thing forever it's a monster so this particular polisher says 0 to 1750 RPMs you don't want to get something that's zipping too fast because it's not going to cut the same either it's just like an orbital um a d a sander if you zip a DA sander at full speed it's not cutting as good as it is if you slow it down a little bit it will cut better and more uniform so the polisher is like a very specific speed around 1800 to 2000 RPMs is what I typically like to polish at but I always like to turn it all the way down if it's a variable speed I like this one because it's old and it's heavy the majority of the pressure is really from the polisher I don't push hard I kind of just I usually am dancing around with the handle barely holding onto it keeping it in line but the reason that it's important on the direction is because the way that I do that if I was going in and you want the pad so if we're tipped up on edge we want the pad spinning off of The Edge not into the edge so if I go from here I'm good it's spinning off the edge if I tilt too much back now the edge is coming around and it's grabbing on this side into the edge and it's going to tear the corner rip and burn the paint so as you polish you should be rotating the the rotary around so it is always directionally going off of the panel never into it that's the biggest thing I would say practice because the more you practice of that you won't even think about it it's just muscle memory and the more you do it the better so so you're standing in the perfect place to get this Edge what do you do on this one I will completely move around and get to a position sometimes I have to be on the ground laying on the ground sometimes I have to Pivot the buffer back so if we're here we're not always using this side I guess is what you're probably getting at but sometimes I'll use the bottom of the polisher well now if I'm using the bottom of the polisher on the bottom of the door it's going off it's going the correct direction and as I go to this side I am then tilting it to this side and it's going off the corner so really you are always staying going off as long as you are paying attention to that rotation of the pad well you burn faster on this back Edge when you're tilting here versus here um I like to when your guys are First Learning I like to use a lot more wax than when you get good because really the biggest thing is that if your pressure like if you have a different feel of the pressure on the front versus the back now you have the weight of the polisher also coming down too you're going to put more pressure on that back Edge I would say to focus on trying to use the upper half if you can but do I use the back side all the time I think the more you do polishing the more you'll find what works for you really you don't know how bad it's going to be until you burn some stuff so I would say just get a junk panel and burn it and then you know how far you can push it and you will burn faster with that back Edge than the front that's what happened to me gotcha yeah so um the other thing is these little Spurs I use this flat blade screwdriver for years doesn't matter what you want to use but what you're going to do is as this builds up and it starts to dry on here maybe you took lunch break came back and it's all crusty you want to spin it and this is going to break up all of that hard wax residue and clean it out or you can get his bucket cleaning system which I think is great but I tend to always just use the spur what the jury is still out but it does clean very well when you're done with everything yeah it does keep a little more moisture than I like in the the pads but yeah because you are cleaning with with soapy water right it's uh some kind of a packet that you dump into the water that has some kind of cleaning solution it works really good it's made out of unicorn piss and farts and Donkey farts so use whatever you guys want like I said I used to use a screwdriver the biggest thing is if you put a pad that's old and crusty on there I hear you're scratching it so that's why we use a clean pad or a brand new pad again in the beginning it's going to look like a cat fight so I like that these uh older polishers I think some of the newer ones too are a soft start but I don't find them to be as soft like I have a DeWalt I have a dyna braid I have a bunch of polishers and that Flex I have is pretty nice yeah the flex is nice um again you get what you pay for we could we use the Harbor Freight ones in the polishing class we did yeah so uh if you guys want Hands-On for these classes shoot me an email it'll be in the description but we do have classes on all these different things that we're teaching where it's Hands-On and you get a lot more uh instructional thing instructional things on what to do and what not to do we're going to push you more in a class to screw it up so you know what to do and what not to do but you're gonna run it slow so that way you can season the pad if you hit it full speed it's going to throw the wax all over everything all over the camera don't do that all over Mike's precious cameras don't do it so I like to run it very slow [Music] so those are kind of scary yeah so we got these massive holes and it will totally rip those rip that edge of paint out especially if it's a fresher paint this is pretty dry but uh you can do you can color sand and polish clear coat the next day if you wanted to it's just going to be a lot softer it's going to have a lot more shrink later whatever works for you but this hole polish the hole like you would the edge of the door you're always going to be spinning into the hole and then you might hit the edge here and there but if you have trouble with that you can always run it in and go right up to the edge and just take your time as you go around their rotary to me works better it's more efficient it cuts better you have better Clarity but everybody's scared of them because as soon as they get in orbital they think that it's easier it's not scary it's not scary but I don't think this is scary once you get the hang of it either so get a scrap panel and just practice I think you guys will like the rotary once you get the hang of it I like to keep it on the low setting and then I lock the trigger on I don't have a loose shirt ask me how I know about that one don't have a loose beard a loose beard it will grab that and just choke you out so uh how you know when you just do it how you know how you need to know just do it is feel the panel as you polish if you have a bunch of heat the other thing is you don't want to polish in the direct sun you want to polish in the shade and uh just constantly feel the panel so you get a feel of how much wax it needs you do not want this panel to start getting hot as soon as it gets hot you're looking at delamination issues where primer filler and all that stuff will start delaminating underneath you may not see it it'll show its face later but even with just a couple passes it's already shining really good it was already shining with 3000 here [Applause] how we talked about sanding and keeping your pressure on the panel side instead of it barely tilting you need to be conscious of that with your pad making sure that the majority of your pad is on the flat and not slightly kicked over as soon as you go beyond that point you're going to burn a fresh panel again I'm trying to still season the pad get all the edges if you have a curve that's really tight you're going to want to run this thing to get the wax all the way around this Edge for what we're doing we don't need it [Music] [Applause] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] a couple other things a lot of guys will it's like when you use an air grinder or anything like that or even sanding you are using your arms and your elbows more if you keep your elbows locked in and you're using your torso more and you're moving your legs and your hips to move through this panel you're going to have a lot more stability and you can keep more control so if you do grab an edge on accident you're not going to zip it off and have the handle hit another panel or whatever it may be so you have way more control keeping your elbows locked in if you guys are wanting to do rotary I recommend going to a higher grid I know some guys won't want to go to 3000 grit and they'll try to cut a corner that's fine but if you are new to Rotary I can tell you that if you go to 3000 or even 2500 this polishes back very easily we're almost already done with the wool pad and it's not that bad um another thing is if you are scared of edges astronomatic Dyna braid I think is another one who sells like these mini polishes there's a bunch of them out there grios has them but the thing about the grios one is that it's a very big bulky polisher even though it has a three inch wheel it's not going to fit as many places so what I've done is I've taken the astronomatic one I get the small three inch wool pads and then I put a paint regulator on it because this thing is All or Nothing the trigger there is no rheostat it's just air powered full kill throw wax all over Mike and the cameras and everything else so don't do that by putting that on there you can spin this thing super slow the other thing I like about it is that it's low profile just like when I use a grinder I always have my pinky out or like a pinstriper and I will take my time and I can detail all of my edges so if you have an edge that you're struggling with or you're scared of these have way more control you can go around if we sand the perimeter first do the hard stuff first polish the hard stuff first this is going to get you a very good feel of what you can get to and what you can't so do one panel before you sand the whole car and realize you can't get that everywhere otherwise you're re-clearing the car surgical yeah if you don't have a big compressor I think you need like a 5 CFM to run that thing okay yeah it does suck a lot of air yeah so just so you know ask you how you know yeah you can kind of see all the wax do you also want this to feel damp um you don't want this thing dry feeling or hot I always like to keep it very lubricated and it's going to cut better I think that if you have it too dry the wool pad will start to scratch you want a very clear finish before you move out of wool it should look almost perfect don't think that when we go to the foam pads that you're going to refine the Finish you will refine the Finish but if you have scratches and Swirls and the spider webbing it's going to be there so just just nip it in the butt here the other thing is we don't ever sand like this radius like this because we're going to put a flat spot in it well what's it doing it's putting more pressure on the radius versus a flat so I will always take the polisher and I will run over with the radius same thing if you're going to use a DA on the sander roll with your shapes whatever Edge it may be anything else you can conclude from that for me this is the stage that I trans I I stop using the Sam's Club or Costco towels yes and I start going to like I think the gray ones we use are like a 480 G they're like 500 right yeah they're close what's that GS something uh don't ask me I'm not a and we we got them on Amazon but you can get them what's the rag company right yeah the rag company the rag company sells all variations of different uh thread count on these microfibers but you know when we're in the sanding stage the Costco microfibers are a great buy for the bang your buck but if you're going to go to the rag company as soon as you start polishing you need to be using something that is not going to continually scratch you might get it all out and we get to the next grits our next pads you're scratching it just wiping it off so think about that we're in the polishing stage you're scratching the car as you are cleaning the wax off you guys need to be thinking about how you're going to care for the car when you're all done and you either receive the car or you've got to maintain that on how you wash it um I talked a lot with Jason Kilmer about ceramic Coatings and stuff like that and for as much time and Mill thickness that you end up with these custom cars I mean think about it the primer that we use alone one pass with the primer that we use is the same Mill thickness as a finished OEM car so with having that much Mills and expansion and contraction you're putting a hard surface with something like the Ceramics and to me and a few others that I've talked to it just it doesn't really seem to have a benefit yes it is keeping the finish on the exterior a little bit harder and it has a little bit more lubricity but really they have um sealers right they have sealers that you can put on these cars now and it's not going to have the same hardness as those you just have to keep that nice wax on there so that way when you do wash the car the majority of the dirt comes off with just the hose before you even grab the pad we're going to go right back through this with this bit just to make sure I'm being uniform and then I don't have any of those Rags on me so we're going to continue with the Costco ones to get this area down and show you guys I think with going over this with the wool pad to 3000 grit honestly is probably it looks better than most people's polish jobs at a typical collision shop just because everything there is being pushed through fast it's not allowing you to do the time most of that stuff is done with a da it's not done by hand the clarity is different right now when it comes to these lights again we're not using tubular lights we're using round lights because we're looking for the clarity and the light the other thing that's super helpful is having a headlamp a headlamp is going to show you everything right where you are looking the whole time and then when you get to Beyond wool you're going to start seeing the haziness right and that's what you really want to get rid of there shouldn't be any haziness with even just the wool pad so but those lights being where they're positioned and even if we can bring them down a little bit lower when we get to the final that's going to show you more of the Halos the Holograms the spider webbing but you want it to be I would I mean we have a little bit more Polished Work to do around this hole here but I didn't sand a bunch in here either so we'll come back through with the wool and I'll make sure I get this last bit of Dole but up here where I really focused I would say you're probably 90 95 percent no scratches in this area we'll come back through and just make sure we have that thing buttoned up with the wool pad same 110 and then we're going to switch to the foam pad this pad not all foam pads are created equal there is a lot of foam pads out there that are a lot thicker and a lot poofier I would say these pads are very firm Ober Car Care is who sells these ones I have not found one I mean I'm sure there is but I haven't found one that I like better than their pads so we're using the yellow Ober Car Care pad for the step two and that's going to be with the exact same polish The Cutting compound the 110. so we're going to go back through I use a lot more wax than most but I like to make sure it's lubricated and it's really cutting the the compound itself is taking rid of it's getting rid of all the scratches the way that it's actually cutting it's not necessarily the foam as much as it is having the product I find by using more of it it does a better finish all the way through what it's a very firm pad sir there you go now you look all professional bring my neck with it [Music] [Applause] as I run the yellow pad through this because it's a lot more firm it doesn't have so much give like the wool pad does I usually start out a little bit more of an angle off of the panel with the buffer and as I start to see the area get to where I want the Finish and I want to work out the wax evenly I start to bring the buffer down a little bit I mean it's barely off of flat and that's going to help start evening out the wax itself again this is where having a clean towel is going to really start mattering because that's all we're going to have to do with the Rotary and here we're just checking it so fold in our edges we can start using our light source if you have excess wax built up you can get a detail spray and it will help keep it clean I really don't do a lot of wiping off of the excess wax until I get to about this stage and now we can check where we're just about there and a lot of times you would really consider this for the most part done but if we were to put this in the sun right now like the lights look great but as soon as you put this in the Sun a lot of times it will look uh swirly because of the rotary so that's really the only time that I use an orbital polisher is because I go back through this like this is all 110 polish we're going to take the over red pad and we are going to put it on an orbital sander which the one we have is a grios and we're going to run back through this with the 210 and it's just going to fine tune the finish so that way when you go into the sun you don't have any of those swirls anything you want to add on that just move your lights around and check different angles and really look at it because it sucks when you pull it out of the garage or yeah the shop and you see all that stuff the other thing too is I think if you have the right lighting even if you have like you have those adjustable sunlights that you could change the range I've even found that if you have different lighting if it if it be a little bit dimmer or a little bit brighter you will start to see more of those scratches show up if you find any of those scratches you basically have to go back and Rewind to what stage you think you lost it whether it been you picked up dirt from somewhere it was windy it was whatever it may be you needed to sand a little bit more with that specific grit but really I mean this little one and a half by one foot area we've got a decent little time in this thing what do you think we probably got realistically if we were rolling right through hour and a half two hours maybe a couple hours yeah probably two hours start to finish and uh that's what you're gonna do for the entire car so even if you're like I want to do this you have to start tracking how much hours you have into a panel to be able to quote for this stuff in the future you have to cut your teeth and eat it and know that you're not going to get paid well to do this but every bit of this when you get to this level you should be paid for so if you track every car and you can see how the finish just gets better and better you can charge accordingly but when we first started learning this we ate Crow for quite a while so this is a griosh orbital polisher the other thing that's different is instead of the spur we have a brush that's a very firm brush that you're going to use for the foam pads if you were to use the spur on any of these foam pads it just tears them right up so I have just a tiny little bit looks like it was barely used that's all it's going to take to get rid of the residue this is the stage where we switch to 210 so this is the same Maguire's brand but it's the 210 110 and 210 is specifically uh formulated to work together with each other stuff's thicker Mike's good at this lots of practice that link 210 you don't have to use near as much of we usually do like four dots on your pad and I feel like this thing's always different I just kind of dotted around something you need to know is that unless it's a forced orbital rotation you do not want to be tipping an orbital polisher up on edge because then it's not oscillating around you want to lay these flat on the panel and then work up over the curve back and forth we're not zipping it super fast we're just putting a little bit on there and what we're doing is this is just getting rid of all your Swirls and your finish again you can do this entire polishing with an orbital an orbital polisher you just have to use whatever pads work and that they recommend for that polisher I personally find that the Finish is a lot clearer a lot crisper and if you use an orbital you have a little bit more of that chatter from it oscillating around we'll grab our new towel that that is the finished product right there with the 210 the 210 takes far less than you need of the 110. I use it pretty liberally with the Rotary the pro and the con there again is I feel like a rotary is a little bit clearer the rotary gets there it I feel like it takes a little bit more elbow grease to get the same Clarity out of it but that's just my opinion I'm more all of my roots are rotary so that's what I feel comfortable with so that's really what I have it to base off of I do really like how anytime I have any kind of swirls from a rotary I like that that orbital polisher at the end makes everything completely clear you put that thing out in the sun and as long as you checked it with the right lighting it pops and you have that depth because you spent the time in the Bodywork so just know it's not because we float coated we didn't float coat this car this is five coats of clear there's a bunch of different materials and ways you could change this do whatever works for you guys I hope that all of these little things maybe helped you guys pick up one or two things that could take what you were already doing and make it that much better so I hope that if you guys know somebody in the industry who is doing this and if they you feel that they could find this useful please share the video with them because I know I was looking for this stuff for a long time and really my lifeline is Jason Kilmer thank god he's a friend of the shop and of mine and uh share what you guys know continue to learn and we will see you guys on the next episode thanks for watching kill the frame dude what you always hang on the frame I use this you're hanging on the frame still as you can see it right there still in there Jesus [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: SYLVESTERS CUSTOMS

Views: 59,107

Keywords: wet sand, color sand, polish, rotary polisher, rotary vs da polisher, mirror finish, mirror finish polishing, orange peel, orange peel removal, block sanding, wet sand clear coat, blocking clear coat, how to polish a car, paint correction, wet sanding, how to remove a scratch, cut and buff, how to wet sand, wet sanding a car, paint correction steps, wet sanding and buffing, dual action polisher, wet sanding clear coat, paint correction for beginners, wet sanding paint

Id: 2meI3jnGajo

Length: 98min 16sec (5896 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023