Help with compounding and polishing by hand.

[mills3]

My vehicle is a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. I always take good care of it, but like always, you still get some swirl marks.

I recently purchased a kit of Meguiar's products. Included in that kit is Meguiar's compound, polish, and wax.

I have some light swirl marks, and was hoping that I could get them out by hand using Chemical Guy's Pads. I purchased three of them the other day. I got orange, white, and black.

My question is, am I able to take the minor swirls out by hand with the products that I have now? I want to get the minor swirls out, polish it up, and then wax it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Desertnate]

You may be able to make it look better, but I don't know if you'll be able to fully correct those swirls.

I tried for a number of years to get swirls out of my vehicles by hand with little to no success. It wasn't until I used a machine that I was happy with the results. It may be possible by hand, but I wasn't able to invest the time and effort it would take by hand.

[Lakeside Detail]

I doubt your 2005 jeep just has light swirls. Cars have light swirls brand new most of the time from dealer prep. Your not going to do much correction by hand, and if you do it will take a very long time.

[cleanmycorolla]

By hand? Good luck, better off just getting a machine, by hand you'll make it look pretty but wont get much correction. Yes, it can be done, but your arms will fall off.

[Tato]

If I were you, I'd try to do it by hand.

The results? I'd be not worried about results this time, just try to work it out the best you can, find tips for working products by hand here on forum.

I'm encouraging you to do this because every detailer will need hand-polishing skills at some degree. It has to start somewhere, sometime, and why not here, and now?

It's a very tough job even for the toughest guys. Do it slowly, I mean, try to work smaller areas and summing up small parts until you do an entire panel.

Start doing a test spot to avoid making a huge mess to entire car. If you mess a small part, it's just a small work to re-do it and make it better.

I've done many polishing by hand in the past, also using Meguiar's products. Although results were not the greatest, I was able to see little improvement.

The experience achieved while doing this is 'priceless', it'll just cost you some elbow grease, low back pain, cervical pain, shoulder pain, and the best will to order a polisher.

Trust me, if you know a little (or much) how to do it by hand, you'll be more successful with the polisher afterwards. I mean, you'll not start with the polisher from 'zero mark', you'll have a great experience by doing it by hand earlier.

Just to illustrate, many people asked me to do their cars the time I was working by hand, based on results they were seeing on my own vehicles. That said, it's possible to get improvement by hand.

However, in no time, whenever you think of polishing by hand, you'll end up ordering a polisher. The first time you use it, you'll get the results you're looking for, but you'll also polish small areas by hand with the experienced achieved in the task you're willing to do now.

It's your own vehicle, it won't hurt (apart from your joints hahaha), go for it mate!

Please, ask if you need any guidance on this.

Kind Regards.

[mills3]

Thanks everyone! I'll give it a shot by hand and see what happens. In the meantime I'll be saving up for a polisher.