Hi Mike,
What all the hype about water beading? Don't you want water to sheet and run off the paint completely instead of beading and then drying and leaving water spots? Or am I missing something. Also all the "water beading tests" people do can you actually tell how good a wax is by that? Thanks for you input. I appreciate all your great advice.
This has been discussed many times on many different forums. The best answer I can give based on all of the posts I have seen and my understanding.....you are correct, sheeting is much better than beading in terms of what is best for the paint. Beading makes people feel good because they can "see" the wax working. So for the few detailers of the world, get the nasty mineral filled crap off the paint. For the average person..."look how nice my wax beads water", majority rules
Good luck finding any tests on that one, but I'm sure all of our AG forum friends will have their opinions. I'll throw mine out there...Hi-Temp Bahama Mama seems to do pretty good, I just wish it was more durable.
I love the water beads becoz while I'm driving those small beads will fly off my car's hood. I love to see those water droplets we call beads fly off. If I use a sheeting liquid sealant, those beads that are less tall n seems harder to fly off my car. It also motivates me to keep on applying a new coat of wax when the beading seem to be lesser.
I have to admit that I am being driven a bit up the wall on this subject. There are some basic, textbook, errors being made in this sector and they are outright ignored (If people even argued about it, I would feel better!).
Ok, a knock up of something to try to explain hydrophobic and hydrophillic.
With a strongly hydrophobic surface, we get tight beads. Tilt the surface and they want to run off quite easily. Unless you have a huge volume of water, you will get it running off in blobs or beads, any sheets which try to form will break up quite easily. This is what you guys have when you post 'beading' pictures.
Then you have a less hydrophobic surface. The beads are not all that tight anymore, more like blobs but they do still form. Tilt the surface and, if you have enough water, these blobs will join together and gravity will get the newly formed 'sheet' rolling off the surface. The sheet will trail along any other water there and leave it dry. This is what you (mostly) refer to as sheeting - the surface is mildly hydrophobic, not strongly hydrophilic
Now look at how a hydrophilic surface behaves. Water actually sticks to the surface. Again, it forms a sheet but this time there is some level of bonding to the surface. Tilt it and the water at the surface interface is still stuck! It does not run off as a sheet, it drains off from the top, a bit like pouring water out of a jug. Eventually you get to the point where most of the water is gone but, because of the bond to the surface, the surface will still be wet, albeit a very thin sheet (much thinner than with a hydrophobic manifestation). You can tilt this all you like and it will not roll off. It will dry via evaporation and it will leave a uniform finish. This is what you often see with soiled vehicles and you can often tell a surface like this because it will be the first one dry after a rain shower.
So I am confident that almost all the time detailers talk about sheeting, they are talking about a hydrophobic surface which is simply not hydrophobic enough to break the sheet down. I am also confident that the majority of times detailers refer to hydrophilic, they have been misled or misunderstand the product. I would further note that there is a tendency that the people selling and marketing products will be no better informed than the end users and I believe this is not helping the confusion at all (because we have some brands who get it totally wrong as well).
Have a look at the attached schematic and perhaps this will help explain further.
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Originally Posted by goodinblack
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