How to polish paint (for beginners!): choosing your pad for the shiniest paint

Ian all the time people ask us how do I know what pad to choose when I'm polishing paint I'm Ivan I'm Nick this is DIY details today we're going to go a little in depth with this Hood how to choose your pad what's the difference between a damp and a dry pad and what's a test spot I want to start here what is polishing paint cuz if you don't know how to choose your pad I'm guessing there's a lot that you probably don't know right and the first thing we need to do though is make sure we have a clean decontaminated surface to start with and this being a scrapyard Hood it's not exactly clean I think you'd be surprised out there maybe not you but the general detailing public that folks are often just taking dry towels on paint they they don't realize how much you can risk when you're not pre-treating a panel when you're not washing it safely let alone polishing it so exactly along the way in every step it's all about we don't want to inflict damage we're trying to reduce the risk of damaging it at all right so the first thing we need to do sure that we get everything off of it we're going to let this dwell for a few minutes let the all clean do its thing now you'll notice that we have a lot of foam from the all clean yes we added just a touch of incredible Suds that gives it more time to dwell more time to stay there and it's fun to watch foam the incredible Suds we just add about a half an ounce in our ik foer just enough to add a little more dwell time minut it is really dwelling right now what what should folks know about what's happening on the paint here before they wash so where the foam is really dwelling that's where we have a higher concentration of dirt cuz it's staying there it's not sliding down if this were ceramic coated this would have slid off the hood or If This Were waxed even for that matter so now we've let it dwell for two or three minutes we'll rinse it [Music] up now is this clean not even close but any grit that was on it we've removed it and the uh all clean breaks down any oils or grease that could be on it next we need to do a contact wash to do so we'll use rinseless wash rinses wash deluded 256 to1 which is 1 oz of our Rines wash to 2 gallons of water just a really easy way to wash your car incredibly safe wash the car how you want to wash the car right we could have said we're just going to start out with clean paint to polish we're just doing a quick wash demo so that's one side of this hood that I just went ahead and washed div it but even that adds a little bit more risk than I'd like exactly so what we want to do is pre-spray a bit of rins on the surface let it dwell for a few seconds and now that rinus is emulsifying the dirt it's breaking it down and it's making it even safer to wash yeah so talk about the difference between I mean this is a test Hood so you can do what you want right but talk about the difference between what I just did versus pre-treating it with rinel one more time so one added extra layer of lubrication and slickness and cleaning power like what's the difference here as you watch this paint the difference is this side will actually become cleaner because now we have the rinus pre-treating and pre-o the job on this side there was a scratch risk now on This Hood we actually want to scratch it up so not a problem but if you're doing it the correct way and we want to mitigate any possible damage that we could do in the washing by safe practices and one of those safe practices is making sure that we pre-spray the rinses now if you're using soap great foam it on rinse it off foam again before doing your contact wash we don't even have a foam cannon in our new/old shop garage right uh no work has really been done in here so we're doing a back to basics series just using a hose so we've been pre-treating vehicles with all clean then hosing it off and then we like to just do then rinseless on the surface like Ivan did and then use rinseless in our wash bucket at this point if you were just washing the car you could spray some ceramic gloss on there's your drying a bada bing bada boom you had a clean protected panel but we are just getting started to prep for polishing right so next step is decontamination to do so we have our perforated synthetic decontamination towel and normally wouldn't even slap it on the on the paint like that but again test Hood right we're trying to inflict a few scratches here even though we're teaching you how to safely wash and there's a lot of scratches in the hood to begin with so what we're going to be doing next is iron remover one spray of iron remover there we go new sprayer once it's on the hood on the towel we marry the two together and that's our starting point so we have a lot more lubrication here and the iron remover is a great lubricant to begin with you'll see suds in a few seconds well there's perforations in this towel too Ivan so what are we trying to remove from the paint and then where is it going well it's going onto the surface of the towel and into the towel and a lot of people get confused about this and they worry needlessly almost that you know what I'm taking off the paint is going to scratch the paint in reality there's not that much there you've washed it beforehand you don't have the grit you don't have the dirt that's there you have microscopic particles of contamination that are on the surface that we don't see with our eyes and we don't feel with our hands they're not that big they're not that scary now if we had taken this before washing it and this is what we're using to wash yeah we're going to scratch the paint we do this so often but it it reminds me when we have someone who's never used this Decon towel before they're kind of shocked with how easy it is how easy and how efficient it is yeah because it's just two sprays of iron remover instead of spraying the entire panel with our most expensive product letting it say looking for those purple streaks that show that the iron remover is working um to convert the rust of these contaminants well in reality look at these SS we could keep working this for another 10 minutes and like this is all you need there's lots of lubrication we have surfactants in the iron remover that add that lubrication make it foam uh and it's doing a great job really cleaning up this paint for us before we polish yeah and I'm purposely doing something here going at a 45 degree angle because we know all the scratches were in a straight line I'm just going to keep going here for a few seconds and we'll check it afterwards to see if there's any straight line 45 degree marring on the surface because people always wonder will this scratch my paint will this Mar my paint right and when done correctly with enough lubrication no and you you can see how much Suds we building up and that is the iron remover that's doing that and when you fold the towel into fours you're mitigating against any pressure points right and I have you know very I'm almost not touching the towel I think that should be enough [Music] perfect now we're actually starting to see some slight water movement on here yeah we've decontaminated this paint and it's starting to maybe show signs of having protection at some point right now I'm going to go get a drying towel I'll be right back cuz we're actually going to dry this little corner to see if the uh decontamination towel did any damage so let me just dry this one little corner here and yes we have scratches all over here but we don't have any marring we don't have any lines going this way nothing nothing at all no and that's the way it should be no pressure proper lubrication it's a safe process now the next thing we want to do is continue this decontamination routine and we're going to do that with water spot remover and the water spot remover arrived so this is you know an important part of decontamination is water spot remover and people think well there's no water spots on This Hood there could be mineral content and minerals come from different things in detailing or in real life sorry and that is if you're driving on a salty Road that's minerals accumulating drying your car or letting it air dry and a lot of people like to use the the Master Blaster or use the um leaf blowers and that is a fun way of drying your car but in reality you're leaving a thin film on there and if you have any minerals in your water that that is going to accumulate and start creating a mask on the surface Ian are we over complicating polishing we haven't even gotten to the pads yet and now we're telling them they need to use iron remover and the Decon towel and and water spot remover which is probably better term to a mineral dissolver right yeah um but but it seems like a lot of steps before they polish uh is is that too much for them no to get great success when polishing it's all on the prep so when you're cooking something if you have everything laid out ready to go that recipe is so much easier to do but if you're hunting for stuff as you're doing same thing but the prep is the foundation to the polishing job yeah and I think of why the DIY are out there might get results that are less than ideal it's cuz they're probably not doing this prep so in fact I would argue that this actually is a crucial part right now I have a rinse stampen towel I'm just going to agitate the water spat remover so this could have been dampened in the same bucket of rless wash we had our Legacy sponge in earlier exactly yep and by agitating we're working in you'll notice I'm not flipping the towel I'm not trying to pick up the water SWOT Rover just trying to agitate I'll let you get that bottom corner there often in detailing you'll flip sides often right cuz you're not trying to drive any dirt or anything that can scratch the paint we've already washed and deeply decontaminated this so like you said no pressure on the towel and you work this exact same side yeah over the entire vehicle right right you're just trying to build redundancy into your water spot remover hitting every part of the paint a little bit of agitation and then you're going to get enough dwell time uh just by doing this that it's going to work well yeah and some people mistakenly think that water spot remover has some form of protection in it because once you've done water spot remover there's a good chance you'll get beating like this and if folks don't quite quite see the beating or they don't know what you're referring to what's the water Behavior looking like well in the beginning when we had water on here it was just a sheet of water staying there now the water is going away and that water going away is indicating to us that the surface is clean now yeah you may think that your ceramic coating or your wax is dead hey it only lasted a few weeks but this brand said it would last this long or or maybe it's our products right this decontamination process restores water beating we just got this junkyard Hood I didn't have any idea about its history but there had to have been some protection on here Ivan well actually paint from a paint booth is the most hydrophobic paint you'll ever see more than most Coatings so a clean paint a clean surface will do this and if you go into a junkyard or if your car is not beating any water at all and then you go through the steps that we've done now there's a good chance you'll actually restore some beading and there's no protection on there whatsoever but when we say water beads these are water beads all these little drops of water droplets of water and you know a lot of people ask oh I I prefer sheeting over beaing well what does sheeting mean this is beading so see all these little beads of water and why would somebody want water beads on their paint water beads lift the dirt off the surface and if we were driving down the highway it would almost selfclean the vehicle because it lifts it off the surface and then it's in that bead is suspended the bead goes away like we see here it's just falling down the panel now sheeting is when you have a higher quantity of water like this it just goes away in one big sheet and we basically have a dry surface so that's sheeting that's beating and a lot of people confuse that oh I want to product the sheets I don't want to product the beads they're the same product it's just how much water are you putting on the surface is going to determine whether it's beating or sheeting I think it's so fascinating cuz this paint really is trashed I mean you see scratches everywhere you could have totally scratched up paint and then protect it at the end and have all these water bees right right exactly but the reason we remove a lot of these imperfections by leveling the clear coat a little bit when we polish is so that your eye perceives all these little scratches and divots right it's refracting light and uneven ways and it looks kind of hazy you're going to get more gloss when that looks more even to your eye and then you add the protection and that's going to add even more gloss and selfcleaning Nick I'm going to stop you from drying anymore okay we have in this corner there's a sticker here so people ask how do we remove adhesives and clearly a dedicated adhesive remover right or we call it a trees sap remover but if you have adhesive if you have tar this is going to break it down think of it as a solvent right yeah and that's exactly what it is so why do we brand it as treap remover if you're using it on stickers well it is a great treap remover and not all solvents work on treap so this is one of those underrated products from us that people probably are like I don't get treap I'm not worried about this right wow look at how easy the sticker's coming off yeah it's just like coming right and there's a bit of tape residue down here I'll just get that at the same time oh that just makes light work yeah all right folks if you've used our treap remover before comment below on how it works and what you've used it on if you haven't what are you what are you waiting for that's amazing Ivan yeah wow then down here same thing we're not worried about scratching the hood that's why I'm agitating with my glove but if you were worried about scratching your hood you put it on you let it sit you let it dwell nice clean microfiber cloth dampened and rinseless you're going to pick that up ever so gently yeah and yes it's not instantaneous on some things it will be really instantaneous on other things it might take a little more so we'll let that dwell for a second I'll come back and wipe it off are we wiping or rinsing oh we can rinse it if you want be careful he tends to be a little uh overwhelming with this sometimes oh well with that spray no not a problem so now we're ready to dry EV yeah's dry this off now we got this hood for a number of reasons and one of them is we'll be doing a test and you'll see a link to the video below once it's released on what cuts faster da or rotary so we're going to reserve this section for that test because it's going to be actually a long test it actually takes longer than you think to get through paint but let's move down here and show what the different pads can do and we just happen to have like one of those kitchen shows look we have pads so we have three pads and we'll start with the least aggressive because that's the way you should always start your test spot with the least aggressive and that is our red foam it's thick it's waffle and we designed it specifically for the rotary now you can use it on a DA works well on a da but on the rotary it's just a breeze it it will make you fall in love with your rotary again then we have our allpurpose pad and if you only have one pad in your life this is the one to have works on a DA works on a rotary cuts a little bit finishes super well it's the allpurpose pad the one that if you need like I said to have one pad in your life you only want one pad this is the one you want our yellow or our gold waffle pad and and then finally we have our wool pad this is aggressive it is specifically designed to be used with a long stroke da like our 25mm da and the reason we designed this is a lot of people spend an enormous amount of time working on a vehicle polishing to try to get a result and they do get the results and they're using foam pads usually a flat foam pad and it takes a lot of time so having a pad that's more aggressive but safe to use at the same same time is great and what we have here is a/4 in of really fine foamed wool and then an interface and the glue that is between this and the foam and between the velcro and the foam is permeable meaning air flows through it and the backing plates on our machine acts like a ventilated rotor on your brakes that it actually draws air up through the pad and exhausted out the side of the backing plate that is a great thing because we're keeping the pad cool the cooler we keep the pad the cooler we keep the paint the better our cut is going to be but also the better our results Nick we have brushes we have tape we have a clean decontaminated Hood but to make it more visual we need to scratch the hood up a little more now above the tap line This will be reserved for another video okay below the tape line is what we're doing now so off we go oh put some pressure on it okay we're going for it like you mean it and people that are afraid that brushes scratch paint you'll see the effort that we're putting in here I've got a you know enough to deflect the hood of pressure and are you getting scratches a little bit oh I'm getting them I'm getting them yeah my uh my brush is fresh from the rinseless yeah I'm getting a few scratches here how do you feel watching us scratch paint willing paint up oh yeah mine's uh mine's thrashed having spent 44 years trying to clean paint and make it shiny this is sort of counterproductive but anyways counterintuitive I should say it's productive CU we're helping you next the pad that does everything our gold standard pad so let's take our 25mm machine first pad we're going to use Nick is our gold standard Pad but dry we're not going to wash it first it's brand new pad so no need to worry about cross-contamination why use a dry cuz a lot of people think a dry pad is great it's fun and we're ready to polish Nick let you do this this is a dry pad this is a dry pad okay and give me your impressions now try to stay just over here and what what speed we rocking three speed three one pass up one one pass down one pass up and you're done down and back up okay rinel stamping towel a dry towel give a bit of gloss the defects are still there gloss for sure yeah it's glossy but the defects are there definitely and the defects are going to stay cuz only one pass like that is just to see how much gloss you're getting it's not going to be defect removal now we're going to take the same pad in our pad washer you've seen us use the pad washer many many times [Music] before now Nick now we have a new damp pad not a dry pad right because in that rinses wash solution in the pad washer uh it shoots it up into the pad slightly damp even after you free spin it at the end there's still a little bit of moisture in there there's less than one gram or 1 milliliter of liquid in this whole pad so it's not a lot but press on this with your thumb or whatever feel a bit of stiffness yeah this is a firmer pad for sure how does it feel when it's slightly damp I would say slightly easier to press down right it's slightly softer so it's going to follow the Contours a little better okay I'm going to put my tape where I sort of polished with the dry pad just so we can keep track of wh we've been yeah so now try The Damp pad damp pad one spray polish on one spray polish that's all you ever need and just just one and down down and back same as you did the other one no pressure on the machine no there you go just like that yep now can you see a difference between the two sides I see probably 30% of the scratches left here but incredible gloss compared to this right and compared to where you went it with a dry pad this is a lot hazier there's more defects there's more scratches here than there are here right what the damp pad does for you other than ease of use and makes the pad a little softer is you actually get better cut you get a better finish with a damp pad Nick one other thing that you probably haven't seen in a while that we have on This Hood and that is dust that's another thing the dry pad does for for you is creates dust damp pad mitigates that so we have this little dust down here that we're not used to seeing yeah we don't get dust with gold standard no exactly and that is the dry pad and it a lot of advant no it breaks the pad down oh Oh I thought you misspoke so it breaks the pad and the Polish down the Polish down faster yeah so that's part of the benefit of the wet pad right exactly so a damp pad not wet does a much better job of polishing so let's just get rid of this dust cuz I don't like dust so get your paint or your tape I mean okay let's do another line so next tape line about here yeah Ian in tape lines it's a rare day yeah exactly with Ian it's kind of like hey I've been doing this a while trust me it works we don't need tape lines takes too long tape dust sling you're wasting your time if you're polishing paint using tape and using polishes the dust but part of our system is that we use a damp pad right and The Damp pad makes a world of difference now this pad is brand new we are going to get a bit of linting from the wool but dampening it actually helps that or reduces that I should say Ian how long can you expect to get lint from a new wool pad couple panels and then is that a issue of safety at all no it's just the way the manufacturing it's not a not a safety issue for us or your paint I mean yeah not an issue for the paint either so like Nick did previously I'm going to use the wool pad this time speed three no pressure one down one up and no this isn't full correction we're just seeing what the pad is actually doing and let's see what it actually did a rinseless wash dampen towel for that initial wipe of your polish is a game changer by the way so we have a lot less scratches than the other side less scratches but this is shinier right the the the yellow pad the foam is going to give you more gloss exactly this is going to create its own scratch pattern so as it levels clear coat to remove the appearance of scratches right which are just kind of these divots in the clear you're leveling clear coat but it's a more aggressive scratch pattern because of the wool so it's leaving its own hazy pattern behind that you may need to then polish over with a yellow it'll create an even finer scratch pattern and look like this so there'll be less defects here and shinier right now there's more defects but it still feels Shin it's very strange now let me uh just do another pass here cuz I and I'll go a little further and this is to show what a two-step can do [Music] okay exactly now I'm I'm going to leave that there we're not going to wipe it off the next is our red rotary jeweling pad and normally we would use this on a rotary but people have asked us can it be used on a DA will it give us a good finish on a DA we're here to say yes Ian this is all about how to choose a polishing pad though so why would they choose red versus yellow for that finishing step this is the finest jeweling finishing pad and let's put another tapel line down here okay actually two tape lines Nick one there and then one just on the edge of there so you're going to leave that one empty no that's what I'm going to do with this now we're going to show you the results of just the red pad by itself normally this is done as a second step or if you're just doing a paint enhancement this is a great pad for that give us a little room to [Music] [Applause] work and be before we wipe this off you can see that we have hardly any trace of the Polish here because it's such a fine pad that it's not doing any cutting a little bit but not much and then we'll do the second pass over the [Music] wool dry yellow waffle yeah wet yellow waffle right Wool Wool only rotary jeweling twostep right hope you keeping track so from our vantage point this by far has the most correction this is the shiniest yeah 100% this looks amaz I don't know if you can tell from where you are but yeah that's the glossiest for sure yeah that's super glossy here we have gloss but we still have a lot of scratches here we have a lot less scratches but a lot less gloss and here we have yeah a good 50% we have gloss we have correction and then here we have less correction and less gloss than here two stage I like these two the best yeah yellow waffle wet pad and the two stage yeah exactly and that's how our system is designed if you're only using one pad you're going to use the gold standard waffle pad the gold pad if you're doing a two- stage you're going to be using the wool pad and then the red foam or the yellow waffle if you desire you've got it can also be used as a final finishing defitely yeah but so to discern between the yellow waffle and the red foam pad right when do you know when to use either of those between the yellow and the red red is no correction whatsoever so if you have no scratches you just want to get more gloss that's when the red pad is for if you're using it after the wool pad one or the other will do my preference is the red one on a rotary but that's my personal preference it'll work on any machine it's not a problem if you don't want to use a rotary and you're just a dual action person yeah yeah no no fears no problems there but you can see the results that we got as a two-step and it's a very simple two-step and we didn't spend a lot of time we just did one pass up and down that's it when you're polishing out there you're going to do one pass left right and then another set of passes up down up down left right left right right you're going to work in that 2 by two section so we teach usually three section passes so up down left right Up Down clean your pad move on to the next polishing section yeah so you will be spending more time on paint you'll get more defect removal with that wool when you're actually we're going to end this actually doing a regular section pass so the left right up down left right show them how you do it with the wool yeah yeah so we'll do it as a two-stage polish now if we're trying to remove these uh these scratches are you putting a lot of pressure and heat on the paint to really get them no the less pressure you have the better better it will cut the better job it will do the easier it is on you the easier it is on the machine and on the Polish cuz when you create Heat this is plastic CLE Cod is plastic it's not lacquer like back in the 70s this is plastic and that plastic when you heat plastic it becomes soft when it becomes soft it becomes malleable and the abraces instead of cutting are now just gungy and rolling and they're not having fun you know what I would never do that I'm enjoying now is I'm just leaning my hand on the paint you ever detail for someone and then they they admire your work and then they lean against the paint this don't normally you never lean on it's a test yard Hood so so this is how I would normally do a test spot and a test spot normally I'll start with the yellow pad do left right up down left right wipe it off and decide do I need to go more aggressive do I not with a bit of experience we know we need to be a little more aggressive with this and we've already done the test spot so but if you're doing a two-stage test spot this is how I do it so start with a wool pad a 50% overlap so I'm moving down roughly about 3 in every time then I'm going to go up and down again moving roughly about 3 in every time and you can see how much pressure I'm putting on the machine none at all yeah and then I'll finish left to right one thing that people may not know how to measure but once you hear it this way it makes sense is this is about as wide as your shoulders that's as wide as you're going You're not reaching over here and your section passes you're staying within your shoulder range right and there's actually one very simple way of your microfiber towel now if you've got a big drying blanket maybe not the best choice but your standard size 16 X6 microfiber towel is a good size next stage two people might be wondering what's going on we just have one liquid in our system it's the gold standard polish and you can leave it on the surface when you're doing a two-step exactly you don't have to wipe it off no we actually prefer you leave it on the surface it actually does a better job one spray on a moving pad one spray and a moving pad and spray like you're angry and I'm going to do the exact same motion speed three no pressure on the machine Flat Pad right and you'll notice there's a small area I left oh I noticed and that is to show that there's other tools on the market now we have our rotary we have our da if you have never polished paint before and you don't want to invest 2 3 four five six some are up to $1,000 now on a polisher there's a simple polisher you can buy or you might already have that does a great job let's see it fly in from the outside here there we go and this is just a simple dual action or random orbital sander we've cleaned the pad one spray of the Polish let's just do that little bottom section here but you could use the wool pad the yellow waffle or the motary jeweling pad the the red [Applause] [Music] [Applause] one and folks can use this at the the highest speed it comes on yeah exactly because of the Short Stroke so damp with rinseless and don't be in a rush to dry it off let the air do a bit of the work for you so I tend to polish the whole car before I wipe it off and then when I'm going around and doing the the wipe off it's very easy I can do two panels go back to the first wipe or wet the third dry the second and just go like that there we have it so as a test spot I see that we've removed a lot of defects there's still defects in the paint and at this point it's up to you to decide whether you want to go after those defects whether you want to spend the time to remove those defects and obviously these defects were a little deeper than normal people don't take a stiff nylon brush used for their tires to wash the paint with but it's a good example of the way we teach paint correction or paint polishing right we don't teach it to go all the way to 100% because you go after being a hero you turn into a zero very quickly clear coat is very thin we teach preservation over Perfection if you're going after that last 15 maybe even 10% look I'm probably going to hit this with with sandpaper which there's probably not enough clear coat to do that then I'm going to be compounding polishing it out you're just removing a lot more clear coat when you're going after the Deep stuff and you're introducing a a lot more risk and so we're teaching you out there how to do this safely with no heat on the paint with great results will it be perfect no and I don't think there's anything close to perfect paint out there anyway exactly so with that if you have any questions leave them below comments if you haven't subscribed yet now would be a good time because there's another video that's going to be featuring this hood on comparing the da versus the rotary and that video depending on when it all comes out is located right here

Channel: DIY Detail

Views: 48,741

Keywords: DIY Detail, Detailing car, Detailing, car care, Yvan Lacroix, Carwash, Foam, Rinseless wash, All Clean, Iron Remover, Incredible Suds, Ceramic coating, Clay towel, perforated synthetic decontamination towel, ceramic coating car, Nick Mcgurk, Ceramic Gloss, Quick Beads, Water Spot Remover, APC, training detailing, ceramic coating, keg sprayer, detail keg, pressure washer, kranzle, waterless wash, tree sap remover, paint decontamination, paint correction, how to detail a car

Id: DApGIlJXV90

Length: 35min 5sec (2105 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024