Thanks Kevin...great advice

 

^^+1^^......

Great advice, Kevin . and thanks for taking the time to post it.

Those rides look tight, yes even the Jetta......

But that Z looks kinda familiar......sweet, bro.....I'll bet he's got it dirty already tho. ....................

C.

 

Had a fun one yesterday, 9 hours with this sucker, some of the hardest paint I've ever worked on. I got locked in the guys garage for an hour too... goodtimes.

 

amazing as usual. I'll be booking you for march I have to work out when i'm getting my new body kit on, and when the paint's cured up so I can put it into your able hands!

 

Everytime I see the kind of work you do on Black Beauties I recall the work you did on mine and I . Great job Kevin.

 

Yep, fantastic job as usual Kevin. Just curious, on average how long does a job take you? I know that it depends on how serious of condition the paint is in, but is it typically a 6-8 hour job?

 

Hey thanks guys.

Length of the job depends on a couple things. This one was 9ish hours for a few reasons - first the paint had some deep marring, second the paint was really hard, and third the paint didn't like to finish down clean, so it was like a trifecta of bad.

Polishing is obviously what takes the most time, on some cars, even badly maintained ones I can get them cranked out in 4-5 hours because the paint finishes nicely (by finishes I mean I use a heavy abrasive to remove marring, but don't get a lot of "haze" or "micromarring", so I can skip a polishing step). On cars like this Corvette (or G35s ), that finish down poorly, I need to do three polishing steps, one to remove marring, one to remove the marring from the previous step, and finishing polish.

So in most cases a multistep job is 5-6 hours, in some it's longer. To give you an idea what I mean by "hazing", check this out:

http://gtaindetail.com/pics/audis4062106/a.html

That had been compounded by someone, so see there are no deep scratches; but all that "haze" you see is like millions of tiny crescent shaped marks from the aggressive compound that need to be removed. On finicky paints that can be even harder than removing the scratches.

 

Great info Kevin. I really didn't know what you meant by hazing until I looked at those pics of the S4. I could see right away what you were talking about.

I really have learned so much from you over the last year or so. I also have a lot more respect for the knowledge and experience required to detail a car properly. Before, I thought detailing a car just involved slapping a coat of wax on by hand.

This maybe a dumb question, but when you talk about paint marring that is more or less swirl marks, correct? I hear that term quite often and I just want to make sure I understand it's meaning.

 

Don't sweat it, I've had this conversation more times than I can count.

Them: So, what do you do?
Me: I'm a car detailer.
Them: People still want pinstripping on their cars???



Marring refers to any type of paint imperfection. I use it too much, probably. Scratches, swirls, bird poop etchings, hazing, etc...all "marring", so like above when I said "One step to remove marring", I meant deep scratches and swirls, then when I said "another step to remove the marring from that step", I meant the hazing from the first compounding step.

Actually, hazing is one of the toughest issues with compounding; it's more difficult to find a fine balance of cut vs finish than it is to just cut like crazy and remove deep scratches.

 

Thanks again Kevin, very helpful as always.

Btw, you do pinstriping too??

 

Lame pics, but how's this for "the sexy"?

 

oooh la la, very nice, I likey lots

 

^+1 me too.

 

nice pics! not feeling how the plate is hanging in the front though :P

 

Hehe, it was just there for the drive back from the dealership, it was on with twist ties. He's removed it now.