Pictures & Comments from May 15th, 2011 Sunday Detailing 102 - Advanced Class

[Mike Phillips]

Continued...

You can see students wrapping their papers around backing pads in this shot and also using a backing pad to squeegee off water slurry and another student hand sanding...

The Advanced Class is a very fast-paced, busy but fun class but you must first attend the Detailing 101 Class.








After everyone has hand sanded using #2000 and #25000 Finishing Papers, next we move on to Machine Sanding. We start with the traditional air-powered 3M Orbital DA Sander.




This is called dampsanding, it's a technique for machine sanding that requires much less water than normal wetsanding by hand. In the below picture I'm misting some clean water, with NO soap for a lube onto the paint and then I'll mist a little directly onto the face of the Unigrit Foam Finishing Disc.


Then we go over the techniques to machine dampsand...



I have a very detailed article on the dampsanding for anyone interested...

Damp-Sanding Tools, Tips and Techniques by Mike Phillips




At this point it was time to take an early lunch as Episode 7 of What's in the Garage? was about to start so we timed Pizza for 11:30am.



More to come!

[james_death]

After everyone has hand sanded using #2000 and #25000 Finishing Papers, next we move on to Machine Sanding. We start with the traditional air-powered 3M Orbital DA Sander.

Wow that is super fine paper.......Sticky keys...

[Mike Phillips]

Mmm.... pizza for lunch...



Here's an over the shoulder shot where you can see Yancy running the Chat Session for the Live Broadcast...



Historically we keep the Detailing 102 Class limited to a max of 12 to 15 people for a high student to instructor ratio. Also because we cover a LOT of material in one day, like hand sanding, machine sanding, compounding with a rotary buffer, polishing with a rotary buffer, polishing with a DA, plus all the side lessons, like using a PTG, cleaning pads with spurs and two kinds of pad washers, and always plenty of questions and answers...




We timed our lunch break to watch our TV show, "What's in the Garage?"


This week it was Episode 7, which included Earl the Plumber's Hot Rod Collection.






If you look in the very back, far right you'll see Earl as he stopped by to watch the show with us and enjoy some car guy commrodery...



Earl's cars being filmed for the TV show...

[Mike Phillips]

After lunch it was time to dive into machine sanding and since we were using the Meguiar's Unigrit Finishing Discs technically we were doing dampsanding....




Father/Son Team checking out the throttle on the 3M Orbital DA Sander



Here's I'm showing Allen how to align the Finishing Disc to the Interface pad before dampsanding...



Focusing on the task at hand... (very good)



You learn a lot in these classes but you also have a lot of fun...



Focusing on the task at hand... very important anytime you're sanding by hand or machine!



Here's Larry trying out the 3M Orbital DA Sander, notice how he has the air line over his shoulder and controls it with his free hand, that's because since it's under pressure it's very stiff and if you don't control it... it can make it difficult to keep the sanding disc flat to the surface.



Here's Kyle using the Porter Cable to dampsand... he also has the cord over his shoulder but because the cord is limp it doesn't affect the angle of the finishing disk to the panel, Kyle has complete control.



More pictures to come...

[Mike Phillips]

Continued...

We make sure everyone gets plenty of time to do all three styles of sanding, hand sanding, machine sanding with an air-powered DA Sander and machine sanding using an electric DA Polisher...


















Next up, we move on to compounding using rotary buffers and wool cutting pads to remove our sanding marks...


More pictures to come...

[james_death]

Great Write up as ever...