Cutting, Color Sanding and Buffing Your Car: A Guide

Cutting and buffing is a service best left to a professional in the auto body field, but if you're good with your hands and you're trying to save some cash you can do it yourself. After painting a car and waiting approximately a month for the paint to cure and all of the solvents to evaporate your left with one final step that will either make or break your beautiful paint job, that step is known as color sanding or in the paint and body field as cutting and buffing. Cutting and buffing is a tedious and time consuming process. The reason it's called cutting and buffing is because what you're doing is using very fine grit sand paper to cut down the top layer surface by the cutting of the paint to make it flat and even, then you use different rubbing compounds and polishes to bring out the luster or sheen of the paint by buffing.

Things that you will need: Wet sanding paper in 1500 and 2000 grit, an orbital polisher (such as Dewalt or Makita, don't even attempt this if you don't have the right polisher or buffer-especially not a cheap one from auto zone), linen free clothes, 3M cutting buffing compound, 3M buffing swirl remover, 3M buffing final polish, a good wax like Meguirs, and a 3M wet thin wet sanding pad for the cutting process. You can also use Meguirs buffing compounds and full color sanding kits including buffers (orbital polishers) can be purchased at this website which has many different types of cutting and buffing kits, this site has all of the components necessary for the job http://www.tcpglobal.com/detailsupplydepot/ . In this article I will be using 3M buffing products because that is what I am most familiar with, but Meguirs buffing products are just as good if not possibly better. So lets get down to the meat and bones of cutting and buffing.

First of all you need to make sure that you have all the necessary tools and materials for cutting and buffing on the list including a small bucket, your going to want to fill this bucket up with water and some dish washing soap mixed into it, when cutting and buffing a car you want to use soap as a lubricant in the cutting (wet sanding process) stage. Also a squirt bottle filled with soapy water is also very helpful when cutting and buffing or color sanding (they call it color sanding from the days of lacquer paint jobs when the material covering the car was all one pigment, those days are gone and we're in the era of base coat/clear coat is now in full effect), before you begin cutting and buffing you need to realize that the amount your going to be cutting (sanding) is minimal and you're only trying to cut down the top surfaces of the paint. Another thing to remember that the result of the cutting should be that after you wipe the soapy water away with a clean cloth you should be left with a dull white/ greyish surface. If you cut down to the color you have gone way too far, you have to be very careful when cutting and buffing taking your sweet time. On the other hand if your cutting and buffing single stage paint (all one pigment) you should just be careful to only cut down the surface to remove minimal amounts of orange peel and trash (orange peel is the effect where the surface of the paint has a slight texture to it which you don't want and trash are small particles of dust that look like little pieces of sand in the top surface of the paint). Cutting and buffing single stage metallic paints is a bad idea (as it agitates the metallic flakes and will leave you with a dull finish in the final step of buffing).

Before you begin cutting and buffing you need to soak the wet sanding paper in the soapy water bucket to make it pliable and saturated. Take the thin 3M wet sanding pad and wrap it with the wet sanding paper, begin on a surface of the car that isn't out rightly noticeable such as the bottom of a door or the bottom of the back bumper will be ideal to test your skills at cutting and buffing. Start by moving the wet sanding pad back and forth intermittently checking the surface by wiping it off to see if you have the desired results. Stay away from edges because the material can be much thinner and it's easier to cut through to the base coat. You can always use the wet sanding paper without the aid of the pad around curved surface, but is important to keep your fingers together and as flat as possible, remember the whole goal here is to make the paint flat. On flat surfaces such as the hood, doors, deck lid, and the top of the car you're going to want to use the hand held wet sanding pad when cutting. Wet sand the entire car as best as possible and be very careful to not wet sand around the edges as I mentioned earlier. After wet sanding (cutting) the car you're going to need to wash the car completely to remove any soapy or sanding residue. The reason you want to wash the car is so that you have a nice clean surface for the next stage which is compounding and buffing.

In the buffing stage we'll be utilizing the Dewalt polisher with foam pads, you'll need three. Now that you have the car completely dry it's time for some compounding and buffing. Again start in the least noticeable place to try it out, set the speed to about 1500-1700 RPM's, this is a good beginning speed that will not generate too much heat. When using the polisher it's important that you keep it as flat as possible and you don't apply too much pressure as this will create more friction which will in turn create more heat which will leave the possibility of melting and burning the paint. Take the 3M buffing compound and squirt some on the foam pad and then try and distribute it on the panel of the car that you intend to buff, you want to spread it around pretty good so as not to sling a bunch of buffing compound around when the pad begins to spin. Play with the buffer's trigger to get a good feel for the speeds that it will be running at and start the process by pushing the buffer gently against the panel and moving it in an up and down motion, not side to side. Do not stay in one place to long as this will burn the paint when buffing. Remember to keep a soft clean cloth on hand in case you get deposits of compound stuck in place on the painted panel, you'll need this to wipe it off. The effect you're looking for when buffing is for the paint to go from a dull finish to a low to high gloss sheen. Once you've got it figured out on your test panel then you can move to the rest of the car, you may have to go over certain areas two maybe three times buffing them to get the desired effects. This is the first buffing step of the three that you will do. After buffing the whole car with compound you will then need to wash it off very well and dry it. Now you're ready for the next step which is buffing with the swirl remover.

Swirl removing is a definite necessity on dark colored cars such as black, blue, dark green etc. What your attempting to do in this stage is remove the swirls or the hologramming effects that you have accumulated in the compound buffing stage. You should always do cutting and buffing in a garage with good lighting, if you can't see the swirl marks in the garage; take the car out of the garage and step back to take a good look. Pull the car back in the garage and now you know what you're working with. Follow the steps for compounding buffing in the same manner as you did before, but remember to change you buffing pad to a brand new one. We don't want to contaminate any of the buffing stages with any of the materials used on a prior step. You will also most likely have to go over most areas two times buffing. After you have completed the swirl removing buffing step it's time to polish it out. Wash and dry the car again as you did previously and with the last step. Polishing normally doesn't take but one time to do, buffing over the panels only about one time. After your done polishing it's time to apply some good wax (you can choose to or not to wash the car at this point, you may want to remove polish from door jams and crevices), apply and remove the wax per the instructions (they can be different for certain waxes); I prefer to use Carnauba based waxes. Once you've waxed the car you should be all finished. So make sure to follow all the steps in this article carefully for the best results.