Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

[Michael Stoops]

Advanced Class - Pictures & Comments
Meguiar's Car Care 201
Saturday August 7, 2010

Class starts in a few minutes...... images to follow when available!

[Still Learnin]

Re: Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

Thanks for another great class Mike!

[Michael PALERO]

Re: Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

Class was great. Well worth the price of admission =P
But seriously, good stuff.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

What an enthusiastic and passionate group we had over the weekend - you guys were fantastic!! Hopefully you all learned something new and can take that with knowledge with you next time you put buffer to paint.

For the rest of you, here's how the day went:

After spending some time in the classroom going over sanding and buffing basics, it was out to the garage and some hands on work.

We started out with some D/A sanding using 1500 grit finishing discs and followed with 3000 grit finishing discs.







This is the panel after being D/A sanded with a 1500 grit finishing disc. Nice and uniform, this is a very predictable sanding scratch. Remember, this is gloss black clear coat you're looking at.



As predictable as that 1500 grit sanding mark is, we wanted to refine it even further so that it would buff out with ease. Here is the same area following the 3000 grit finishing disc - you can actually start to see some reflections in the finish now.



With the sanding marks fully refined, it's time to start with the rotary compounding. We'll start with the WWHC7 wool cutting pad and some M105 running at 1800 rpm. But first this pad needs some cleaning!



Here a spur is put to use to remove dried product that cause the wool fibers to become matted and flat.



Cleaning a foam pad is a similar process, but you want to use a nylon brush rather than a spur.



Getting ready to pick up the first bead of product, and indicating where it should come in contact with the pad when picking it up.



Even at 1800 rpm the rotary can be very easy to control - just don't fight the tool!!



And the shine is already coming back to our test panel.



We talked a bit about using caution around panel edges, high spots, trim, etc and how quickly temperatures can rise with various pads. Here we're spinning a WWHC7 wool pad against the panel edge in a very aggressive manner. In just a matter of seconds the temperature on the panel edge reached 109F.



Doing the exact same test with a W7207 foam cutting pad brought surface temps up to 180F in the same brief period of time. Rotary buffing is a very different experience than D/A buffing, so think carefully about what you're doing when using this tool.



Our next step in the process was to see whether this paint responded better to a W8207 yellow polishing pad or a W9207 black finishing pad with M205. We had some holograms from the wool pad/M105 process, which is to be expected. But we also needed to remove those.



The yellow pad still left some light hologramming so we gave the black finishing pad a go, still with M205 and turning at 1000 rpm. That gave us a hologram free finish, so it was definitely the way to finish out.

Demonstrations done, it was time for the students to get some hands on experience.









Even a bit of hand sanding to get a feel for the difference between it and D/A sanding.



This may have been a tiny bit too much product......



It's always nice to have a student with a good deal of experience on hand. Here Erik gives some pointers to Nick.



3 stations, 12 guys, plenty of sanding and buffing fun!



He's clearly getting the hang of it.



Ron concentrates on getting the maximum out of the paint. At one point he asked if "this will be as much fun when I'm actually working on a car as it is right now?". Now that's enthusiasm!!

[Erik Mejia]

Re: Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

Thanks for the class Mike, it was a lot of fun and extremely educational. Been looking forward to trying out the Meguiar's Sanding Disks and they proved to be great products. I had a lot of fun. Thanks again.

[CaliKotse]

Re: Pictures from August 7, 2010 - Saturday Advanced Class

I've learned so much! Now I need a rotary.