Which approach to address Orange Peel?

1. I have encountered two approaches to wet sanding for orange peel. One of them involves starting with p1500 or p2000 grit and moving up to p3000 or even more. Finishing is either compound plus polish or polishing only. The second approach involves starting with p1500 or p2000 and then following up with compounding with a cutting pad and a polish step to finish. Some modern compounds mention their ability to remove p1500 sanding marks and actually do, this forum's personal favorite m105 seems to do just that and quite a few other products on the market seem to do it too.
Which approach is the better approach to ensure minimal cutting down of paint assuming the car is not factory paint and neither single stage but a medium solids
acrylic? I do understand there is a third approach which is the denim pad method but have found it apparently requires one to go through a lot of pads and I believe I read somewhere that it cuts more paint than a wetsanding approach.


2. What will cause more damage, starting with p2000 and realizing it's not working out and then moving to p1500 or starting off from the p1500? I understand it has been always said least aggressive method should be done first, but if the least aggressive method is escalated to a more aggressive method then have we not removed twice the paint hypothetically as opposed to if we had begun with a aggressive method avoiding the guesswork? This emanates from the fact that whether one does p1500 or p2000 you are going to generate slurry, which means there is some clear coat being removed in either step and probably twice the amount (not scientifically) if the p2000 to p1500 method is used.


3. Also would like to to know also whether hard or soft sanding block is recommended for orange peel sanding?

Do a test spot starting with the least aggressive grit you can and go down from there.

That small test spot will 100% answer every question you have my friend.

As far as sanding block. Same thing test out both and decide which one gives u the best results. I use a medium density block (when I use blocks) for pretty well every application.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deltree

Which approach is the better approach to
ensure minimal cutting down of paint
assuming the car is not factory paint

and neither single stage but
a medium solids acrylic?

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Since it’s not the (very thin) factory paint...

Is it possible to find out not only if the
painter sprayed some extra CC, but also
how much cutting was done to it before
the vehicle was handed-off to the owner?
{It’d make the sanding less stressful, IMO.}


If not:
Doing a “Test Spot” is the Best Practice.

[You can always pick out another section,
on a different panel, to perform another
Test Spot when a more aggressive approach
for orange peel removal is deemed necessary.]


Bob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FUNX650

Since it’s not the (very thin) factory paint...

Is it possible to find out not only if the
painter sprayed some extra CC, but also
how much cutting was done to it before
the vehicle was handed-off to the owner?
{It’d make the sanding less stressful, IMO.}


If not:
Doing a “Test Spot” is the Best Practice.

[You can always pick out another section,
on a different panel, to perform another
Test Spot when a more aggressive approach
for orange peel removal is deemed necessary.]


Bob

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Hi Bob, thanks for responding. The painter was not allowed to touch the car after the paintjob so basically he was not allowed to correct paint. As this was a second repaint in less than a month, the last time they used a rotary buffer to cut orange peel which caused a massive amount of scratches and practically lost loads of paint. This was a payback job the only difference was I took the car off of him before he could rectify as I wanted to control the variables this time around. Don't ask but the painters in my country can deliver 2 car's right and 3 wrong in a day there is absolutely no consistency.

So it's basically primer, base coat, 2 coats of clear, wool rotary to kill orange peel - 2nd repaint sanded with 1000 grit, base coat, 2 coats of clear now. So I seem to have decent amount of material to play with :) I guess I will go with this approach YouTube