Chemistry degree required

[Mary S]

I have been thinking, in some ways detailing can be one of the easiest professions to learn. Most of the training programs I have come across are anywhere from 2 to 5 days long.

And yet I don't know of any other profession that uses more chemicals than a detailer does. And how many there are out there to choose from to do the same or similar tasks even if you stay in the Meguiar's line.

I have a list of chemicals that a very reputable detailer recommends, and I know he has tested many but no where near all of them.

What I want to know is the science of how to compare without trying everything out. I want to know the science of all the chemicals and how they work.

Well, they offer BS degrees in horticulture, i.e. gardening. I am really serious, I'm thinking I would need a masters degree in chemical engineering to understand all the chemistry of the car products that detailers use and that detailers should know, not to just depend on somebody else's list but to really understand the technology. I was one course short of a second major in chemistry at the bachelor's level. I don't think a BS would be enough.

[Mary S]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Now that I think about it, the reason these courses are available as 2- to 5-day programs is because they all come with lists of what chemicals you should use. Maybe it is the list of what the sponsoring vendor sells, or maybe it is the list that the instructor has tested, uses, and likes. So that list of chemicals and that list of equipment is taught, and it may be a perfectly good list, but the student may never understand it.

Not quite like a doctor prescribing a chemical (drug) for a given purpose. Gosh, I shudder to even imaging if doctors worked with drugs on patients the same way detailers worked with chemicals on people's cars. Doctors wouldn't have to go to medical school. They would just go to 5 day courses where the person giving the class provided them with lists of drugs to give for what, based on their own experience in testing out what works the best. And there would be hundreds of drug companies selling their versions of the medicines with differences big or small.

Well, anyway it is good that cars aren't people.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Chemistry degree required

The chemistry of finish care products can be quite complex, which is why we have several degreed chemists on our full time R&D staff here at Meguiar's.

But it isn't just as simple as what each raw ingredient does, or can do. It's how they all play together in different ratios within the same product, and then how they react under various application forces. Sometimes a product is even developed with a specific applicator in mind, let alone application process.

To see the number of iterations we go through when developing a product, and the time it takes (sometimes a couple of years or more), makes us really appreciate our guys who have studied chemistry and can come up with products that do what they do.

But as an end user, does it really matter that much what we, or anyone else, actually puts in the product? Obviously you don't want anything in there that could be damaging to a finish, but we want that even less than you do! After all, we are the ones who would be dealing with untold warranty claims if we put damaging ingredients in our products.

What I want to know is the science of how to compare without trying everything out. I want to know the science of all the chemicals and how they work.

That would be quite difficult to do, unless you knew not only what ingredients were in a given product, but in what combination and what ratios. Obviously nobody is going to tell you that.

[Shawn T.]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Agreed. There is simply too much to learn about all the different possible reactions with all the possible mixtures and how they react in all different environments. I trust that whatever product I buy will do what it was intended for, otherwise, why would they produce it.

That is why so many different fields are compartmentalized. So that not everybody has to be an expert in everything. The detailers may not know how the products work but they know how to work them while the chemists know how the product works but may not be able to work them. Hope that made sense..........

[Mary S]

Re: Chemistry degree required

I am so grateful that there is such great information available here, and if I needed it I know customer service is there as well. It is reason enough for me not to want to buy other brands if Meguiar's makes it. But sometimes the answers just bring up more questions.

I have a new vapor steam machine and a DVD I bought with 2 hours of explanations on how to use it to detail the interior of a car, which is great. The teacher on the video also recommends a long list of products, about 7 or 8 of them for the different stains on carpet. I really don't want to buy them if something I have or don't have from Meguiar's will work similarly, or even if something I can buy locally can work as well.

Well, that is just one example. I don't know the chemistry of red stains or brown stains or ring stains. Argh! And I realize how dependent I am on someone telling me what to use and not understanding the chemistry.

But I do know it is complex, some products being more complex than others. I will say this, I think Meguiar's is a great company with great products. I just wish you gave 2 to 5 day detailing courses! My life would be much simpler.

But I do have an alternative, and the teacher does use different products but only because he really believes in them, not because he sells them. And thankfully, that company only has a small product line.

[Bunky]

Re: Chemistry degree required

The real aspect is you can take two people using the exact same products and reach different conclusions about the results.

[dvtldav]

Re: Chemistry degree required

The chemical make-up of a product shouldn't matter to the detailer because the way "Product A" works on "Vehicle A" may not be the way it works on "Vehicle B" so just knowing the chemistry of a compound probably would not help much. When you cook, do you worry about the chemical make-up of the ingredients you use? Probably not because you know the recipe will work if you mix everything correctly and have oven or stove at the right temperature and let it cook the right amount of time. It is the same way with detailing, use the products you are comfortable with (the recipe) and add a new recipe when something does not work. Before long you will have a cookbook and you will be a chef, or detailer.

Dave

[Bill Davidson]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Mary with all due respect you seem to have an obsessive personality type. Most of the members on this site have similar personality types (including myself). I often research things obsessively, often to the point that it's quite unnecessary and inefficient. I bet there are detailers out there who will put in 10% of the effort of a person like you or I. Get lots of work and have plenty of happy customers.

That being said, I think a more productive route may be to get some test material to work on. You could pick up a seat and a piece of carpet from a wrecker quite cheap. Clean them up as best possible and then punish them. Mustard, grape juice, exploded pen, gum etc. Go to town!!!

You could also pick-up some carpet samples from a flooring store. You can likely get them for free, they always have samples of discontinued product. I know this because my best friends family runs a flooring company. Anyhow, stain them etc. I know it's not automotive carpet, but it should be a great learning lesson. You'll also know if you are removing the stain, dies in a new carpet etc.

I think experience is the biggest factor. I know when I first received my G110V2, I thought I'd be an expert by the amount of research I had done. Getting it in your hands and actually working with it. Hearing the sounds, feeling the pressure, the speed, the vibrations, watching the effects. That was the true learning experience. The research certainly helped but a few hours with a polisher is more valuable than years of researching how to polish.

p.s. I'm trying to be respectful and helpful. It's difficult to express tonality via the internet, but I'm supporting you. You are going to be an exceptionally good detailer with time and experience.

Bill

[yalerd]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Do you really think it's easy? Do you think that in 2 to 5 days you can achieve the skill level of some professional detailers? Personally I don't think this.

A 5 day course will just give you a head start on the learning curve or tweaking your technique, instead of you trying things and figuring things by reading and doing them by yourself, someone, that you are trusting, is going to show you how to do it from the beginning or how you should be doing it.

I don't think that you have to try everything out to become knowledgeable. Maybe getting to know the principals behind things yes. Easy example, you haven't added all the numbers to learn how to add, you just learn the principals and rules. In the detailing scenario, you don't have to try all the product to know how to remove swirls, you just need to know that you need a product, that it abrasive enough, to correct the problem.

I find it interesting, chemical engineering and all but I think that something that you are missing in your equation is experience. And I personally think that this is an extremely big factor in detailing.

[Bunky]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Well, that is just one example. I don't know the chemistry of red stains or brown stains or ring stains. Argh! And I realize how dependent I am on someone telling me what to use and not understanding the chemistry.

The problem is you can know the science but still get different opinions on how to remove them. If you look at the many,many web sites on stain removal, they vary in the approach.

Then you have a company that sells a product touting it is designed for stain removal listing various attributes and then it does not work as well as some other product.

[wifpd4]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Mary, good luck on your conversion from "com sci" to "chem E", but I think your goal might be "doctor of medicine" with the creed of "Do no harm".

Bandit Bill has good advice for experience. Practice on something you can afford to hurt, 'cuz on a client's car you want to do no harm.

I work in a facilities department of a school district and work with 40 custodians. Just when I think I've seen everything a kid can do, we encounter something new. Only the experience of my associates saves the day.

Do no harm and least aggressive method.

[Mary S]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Getting a practice piece of carpet is not a bad idea. I have a practice hood for paint correction practice, practicing getting out carpet stains with the steamer and chemicals and test carpet sounds like a good idea.

Maybe one of the fields I am most familiar with is clinical medicine at a teaching hospital since my job involves transcribing medical reports for a teaching university. And I have watched some of the residents (students) go from their 2nd or 3rd year post medical school graduate through a 5th and 6th year post medical school graduate fellowship and become attending physicians who belong to the faculty and teach medical students, supervise residents, and are running their own clinical trials and collaborating on others and publishing their work. So counting 4 years of medical school, they have become qualified to teach in medical school with 9 or 10 years of training and experience.

The science of medicine just grows so collectively. Any innovation is published, and after an appropriate amount of testing, new technology is available to the entire profession, as are new drugs, any information relevant to the practice of medicine.

And when a physician prescribes a medicine, he or she knows exactly the result of clinical trials, how many patients got better, worse, or stayed the same, what percent had what side effect, how the drug compared to a placebo.

And they know and understand the chemistry of the drug and the process by which it works.

So my sense of the profession of detailing is that detailers don't advance collectively like the medical profession but rather individually. The forums are an exception, as people are willing to share advice and experience, what worked for them for what situation, what products they found work best for what. The advances are made in the chemicals by the makers such as Meguiar's. But there are what we used to call silos in the computer science world.

I am seeing the silos in the people offering training programs. Each training program builds its own silo. Just a vertical blob of people not really communicating with other vertical blobs of people. What you can learn from one is proprietary, not for public knowledge.

I talked to a gentleman who teaches a course. I had requested a catalog with information, and he called me instead. I had mentioned the other 2 people I was considering training with. He immediately said he had more experience than either one of them. He told me about a very unusual way they trained people how to use the rotary that isn't a common technique.

So in the world of detailing, it matters if a detailer has had 30 years experience instead of 25 or 20, for a class that takes 5 days. And in medicine, it takes 10 years to train a teacher of medical students whom it takes 7 to 10 years to train.

So the difference is the interrelated network of the medical profession and medical progress as opposed to the vertical proprietary blobs of knowledges in detailing.

I am so totally rambling, I know. I know detailing is an art, and I want to know the science of it. And because unlike drugs, the composition of detailing chemicals is not publicly available, that would be hard to do.

[wifpd4]

Re: Chemistry degree required

I am so totally rambling, I know. I know detailing is an art, and I want to know the science of it. And because unlike drugs, the composition of detailing chemicals is not publicly available, that would be hard to do.

Read the labels, get the material safety data sheets, and get the keys off of Mr. Stoops' key chain for the vault in Irvine and you'll be well on your way.

[Mary S]

Re: Chemistry degree required

Read the labels, get the material safety data sheets, and get the keys off of Mr. Stoops' key chain for the vault in Irvine and you'll be well on your way.

ROFL!!

Just to clarify, to an extent, compounds and polishes, those may have a component of chemical content, but their application is primarily a physical one. It would be enough to understand at the physical level what they do and how fast they do it. Usually these are rated at what level of sanding grit they have the cut to remove, but there are other variables. It would be great if a standard set of variables could be applied, a single clear coat chemistry to compare with, the number of sanding strokes applied, the speed of a buffer, how long it would take to remove those marks. If the compound was not formulated to work with a rotary, of course you would substitute a DA, or in the case of hand-applied only, you would substitute the amount of force in pounds applied.

The point is, anybody could do these tests. You don't need to be a chemist to do them, you just need to be able to perform a controlled test.

And then there are the waxes/sealants. The appearance is subjective and may not be able to be tested. The endurance could be tested, subjected to different exposures to car shampoos or detergents. This again, you don't need to know the chemistry of the wax to know this. If a wax claims you can apply it in the sun, or if you can just apply it and wipe it off without drying, you could test all those things. You could test resistance to physical actions that might mar the paint, such as rubbing a terry towel or microfiber across it and see if and how much protection the product provided.

The thing is, so many of the higher end waxes are rather expensive, so I personally, for example, would never venture to make this kind of comparison on the waxes, and then I don't need to either. As a wise person once said, "find something you like and use it often."

Kevin Farrell has set specifications of how he tests a particular compound. He actually worked in the R&D of a car products company in developing a compound until it met the specifications that he was looking for in a compound or finishing polish as applied to rotary use. I believe he said 40 samples were tested until they dialed in a product that met his specifications. And he is one of the few detailers who publishes, which is something about him that impresses me, and I look forward to being able to train with him in a couple of months.

So where I get confused is more in the area of car shampoos, metal polishes, products for other surfaces, all purposes cleaners and degreasers, wheel cleaners and polishes, and dressings. I don't know which ones are pH balanced, which ones are biodegradable. Out of the umpteen dressings that Meguiar's makes I don't fully understand the difference between them and how they are best used. I don't even know how to tell the difference between magnesium, aluminum, anodized aluminum (I think I can recognize painted and chrome).

So sure, if I had been a detailer for 30 years, chances are I have tried just about everything and have found what works well, what is economical, and once I found what I liked, I may not have tested much of anything else because I didn't need to. And this is where maybe getting a turnkey education on the mechanics of detailing and the package of products to use will work. It would be just like if I owned a detailing shop with employees, I would tell them what to use and how to use it and they wouldn't need to understand any theory at all.

And there are a couple of turnkey franchises out there, including DetailKing and SmartUniversity that are just the same way. But you probably couldn't even keep using their name if you didn't use the products they recommended.

Well, I guess I should stop complaining, because the answers to this dilemma are out there. I can learn the chemistry of all purpose cleaners and dressings and anything else, and all I need to do is look at the MSDS and hopefully I won't ruin anything by using the wrong thing in the wrong place.

[wifpd4]

Re: Chemistry degree required

ROFL!!

Well, I guess I should stop complaining, because the answers to this dilemma are out there. I can learn the chemistry of all purpose cleaners and dressings and anything else, and all I need to do is look at the MSDS and hopefully I won't ruin anything by using the wrong thing in the wrong place.

That would be what your insurance company would want too!!!