I did it...

[Erik Mejia]

I purchased a New Makita rotary buffer, and a few other necessary items to help me get through the challenging road ahead. I purchased a Meguiar's backing plate, eductional video, and apron. I just can't wait to start practicing. next stop... the junk yard, or maybe a collision center. I want to pick up some target practice pieces.

[BerraST]

Nice

I like the idea of getting some scrap panels from a scrap yard to practice on.

Good luck with it

Mark.

[Monk]

I did the scrap yard thing. I posted some pics in "starting the rotary journey" a few threads down.

Where I went, it wasn't that easy to find a nice large dark colored panel. I got a trunk lid and sectioned it off, but it wasn't cheap--they explained that "Crown Vic's are pretty popular".

My avatar is a before and after on one of the sections. It is a super dark blue trunk lid but appears lighter blue in the direct sun--possibly over exposed from the camera's exposure meter being thrown off by the sunlight in the center of the lens' metering system. (The dividing line is not straight because the rotary displaced the tape. and where the pad floated over the tape, it removed some of the swirling on the other side of the tape--so if you want a nice clean dividing line, use a couple of pieces of tape so as to keep the "control" panel in its original pristine nasty condition.)

If you can, try and find a panel that has its original factory paint, and has scratches and swirls so you more closely approximate what you will probably be working on. A few bad scratches are probably good, so you can get a feel for how far you can go, OTOH, you can probably put some in yourself if you needed to.

Up until today I had just done a few problem areas on a white car. Today I de-swirled a silver Mustang hood and it went rather well. The swirls are gone, but I did not totally remove some scratches--I did not want to eat up too much clear coat, and you have to practically stand on your head to see them now.

It was my son's car, and he was working on one of his door panels with #80 and the DA. I got him pretty good across the face with sling when I fired up the rotary. Its hard to make an apology sound sincere when you are trying not to laugh

So far I haven't damaged anything, but I have thrown a lot of product around so keep that in mind in whatever area you work in--NOTHING IS SAFE, and dried product is a bear to get off.

[Erik Mejia]

Thanks for the advice, I will keep that in mind.

[Monk]

How is it going?