Wet sanding, cutting and buffing using only a DA

[RaskyR1]

Admittedly I can be a little old school at times, and wet sanding is probably one of those areas. With all the recent threads on wet sanding a fellow detailer, one I respect, David Fermani, mentioned to me how he felt the sanding scratch removal was more efficient by DA as it reduced the number of buffing steps needed (3000+ girt sanding). I've been removing sanding scratches via rotary polisher for over 20 years now and being a little old school like I am I found this hard to believe, but I am always willing to learn new things and figured I'd give it a try.


Since some jerk (aka. bad word) decided it would be fun to slam his door into the side of my car last weekend (even though I was parked out back next to a curb) I had a good test car for Davids method. Luckily it didn't dent my door but car was pretty dirty at the time and as you can see it left some nice deep scuff marks, which measured 3-4 inches vertically. I'm confident I could have removed them using only M105, but this gave me a good reason to wet sand the area and then try removing the sanding marks by DA.



Here is are some pics of the scuff




PTG readings on the door averaged around 115 microns. Since this is car still has the original factory paint, and having know my paint was pretty thin from the factory, I wanted to be sure I didn't remove too much clear.


I first sanded with Mirka Abralon 2000 grit disks on the PCXP using a speed of 3.5


I then followed that up with some Abralon 4000 grit disks....you can see a noticeable difference in the two in how much more dull the 2000 grit looked.


I then primed an orange LC pad with M105 and made 1 section pass (3 vertical, 3 horizontal over lapping passes) using the KBM on the PCXP, speed 6.

Here is how the paint looked after that pass!




Pigment transfer from my tinted clear...


After a quick section pass with M205 on a black LC pad here were the results.





I must say I was very impressed at how quickly this method was able to remove the sanding scratches. Keep in mind that the paint on my car is very soft and the results may very on different paints. I'd definitely like to try this method out on a few more paint types, but as of now it seems very promising.

Total material removal was 8-10 microns

Thanks David!


Next up will be this bad boy which has some crazy hard paint! May be a while before I get to it though.



Rasky

[rwright]

Great post Rasky. I need a PTG because I'm about to start experimenting with wet sanding.

[Brian_Brice]

What were your measurement reading afterwards Rasky? Paint is definitely Swayze bro, nice work.

[RaskyR1]

What were your measurement reading afterwards Rasky? Paint is definitely Swayze bro, nice work.

Yes, I didn't take any pics of it but they were in the 104-108 micron range.

[Brian_Brice]

That's what I like to hear sir, nicely done.

[ASPHALT ROCKET]

Great job Rasky. Dave does have some great advice and is a blast to talk with.