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I got my first chance to play with the rotary last night. I was able to get a hood from the body shop to play with, it’s a dark brown metallic from some small car.
I started off with #2 Fine Cut on a cutting pad on one side. The first thing I discovered was that setting “1� is too slow. The pad wants to jump around and the buffer didn’t glide smoothly over the surface. Setting the speed to around 2 or 3 made things a lot better. I prepped the pad, then applied a small bead to the hood. Maybe it’s the LC variable contact pads, but I didn’t have much problem with splatter.
I tried buffing with the pad completely flat, but since the hood was being supported by saw horses, it wasn’t nearly as stable as it would have been attached to the car. The torque of the buffer kept wanting to pull/push the hood off onto the floor. I buffed the side of the hood with #2/cutting pad twice. When I wiped off the excess, I noticed some hazing of the paint. Switching to a finishing pad eliminated the haze. Inside the garage, the finish looked really good, most of the minor imperfections were gone, just the deeper ones (from being tossed around the scrap pile), the RIDS random isolated deeper scratches remained.
Then I used DACP on a polishing pad on the other side of the hood, still keeping the speed between 2 & 3. I did this step twice then wiped off the hood before taking it out into the sunlight. I was shocked to discover that there wasn’t nearly the visual difference that I thought there should have been. The buffed sides looked a bit clearer and were definitely smoother, but the swirling seemed almost identical to the center un-buffed section???
Maybe I’m not going nearly as aggressive as I thought I was. I thought the DACP would have had a greater effect, but it didn’t seem to do much more cutting of the surface than the #2 did. Looks like I’m going to have to find a sturdier way to support the hood while I practice and possibly find the point of causing damage and work backwards.
I started off with #2 Fine Cut on a cutting pad on one side. The first thing I discovered was that setting “1� is too slow. The pad wants to jump around and the buffer didn’t glide smoothly over the surface. Setting the speed to around 2 or 3 made things a lot better. I prepped the pad, then applied a small bead to the hood. Maybe it’s the LC variable contact pads, but I didn’t have much problem with splatter.
I tried buffing with the pad completely flat, but since the hood was being supported by saw horses, it wasn’t nearly as stable as it would have been attached to the car. The torque of the buffer kept wanting to pull/push the hood off onto the floor. I buffed the side of the hood with #2/cutting pad twice. When I wiped off the excess, I noticed some hazing of the paint. Switching to a finishing pad eliminated the haze. Inside the garage, the finish looked really good, most of the minor imperfections were gone, just the deeper ones (from being tossed around the scrap pile), the RIDS random isolated deeper scratches remained.
Then I used DACP on a polishing pad on the other side of the hood, still keeping the speed between 2 & 3. I did this step twice then wiped off the hood before taking it out into the sunlight. I was shocked to discover that there wasn’t nearly the visual difference that I thought there should have been. The buffed sides looked a bit clearer and were definitely smoother, but the swirling seemed almost identical to the center un-buffed section???
Maybe I’m not going nearly as aggressive as I thought I was. I thought the DACP would have had a greater effect, but it didn’t seem to do much more cutting of the surface than the #2 did. Looks like I’m going to have to find a sturdier way to support the hood while I practice and possibly find the point of causing damage and work backwards.