Why should I work in small areas at a time?

[mike6789]

So im going to use my new g100 on my car today, but I'd like to know why it's imporant to work in small square areas at one time only... i'd like to do my whole hood in just two sections maybe... is that alright?

[Lydia]

Re: Why should I work in small areas at a time?

It is important to work in small areas at a time for a few reasons. One, if you work in too large of an area, your product will dry out before it is fully worked in and broken down. Two, if you work in a large area you are more likely to miss spots. Three, I had one in mind but I already forgot it. Hopefully one of the experts will be able to tell you other reasons.

[SVT Lightning]

Re: Why should I work in small areas at a time?

Lydia is right.....if you are using products to remove defects. If you are applying a pure polish (#7) or a wax (#26), then you can work a much larger area. At least I do anyway.

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Why should I work in small areas at a time?

The real reason you work a small area at a time is because the cleaning action of the dual action polisher is gentle and generally speaking most paint on most cars is hard, at least harder than traditional single stage paints and for this reason it's hard to remove small particles of paint which is how you remove swirls and scratches. That is you remove the paint surround these types of below surface defects and in effect level the paint out flat.

Because the foam pad, the chemicals we use and the action of this tool are all gentle to the paint, (thus no swirls and no burning), you have to shrink your work area down so the combination of these three things can effectively remove paint.

If you carve out too large an area, you will not be focusing the cleaning action long enough to one area to be effective. Thus you won't remove the defects and you'll be disappointed when you inspect your finish and then come back and ask more questions as to why you're process isn't working.

You can tackle large areas when waxing or applying a pure polish to make the paint look good or add protection because with these procedures you're not trying to remove paint.

When trying to remove defects, i.e. trying to remove paint, you must shrink your work area down. The harder the paint, the deeper the defects the smaller the area. The softer the paint and/or the more shallow the defects the larger the area you can work.

Test and experiment and see what works best for you on the paint on your car.

[the other pc]

Re: Why should I work in small areas at a time?

At first glance it may seem like Lydia and Mike said two different things but they are really two ways of looking at the same thing.

As Mike points you have to work the product sufficiently to do its job over a given area. If the product lasted forever, never breaking down, never drying out and never loading the pad then you could work large areas as long as you moved at the same slow speed and took just as many passes. Instead of doing a 1.5’x1.5’ patch at a time you could do one 1.5’x15.0’ patch, it would just take ten times longer than each smaller patch and you wouldn’t need to stop in between.

But the reality is that you can only use so much product at one time. If you try to glop on ten times as much product it will dry out, clump up and saturate the pad long before you’ve accomplished anything other than making a big mess. So Lydia is also correct.

For any given combination of paint, pad, product and environment there’s some optimum size that gives you maximum efficiency.


PC.

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