How to Cut & Buff Your Car's Paint Work

I'm going to talk about cutting and buffing the paint job on your car, first of all I'll talk about the reasons to cut and buff the paint job on your car, the first and foremost reason is that your car was just painted, and has some dust, or runs in the paint work.

A correctly done cut & buff will get rid if slight surface imperfections, and for show cars, it will give you paint that deep look, like you could sick your hand in the paint job, and would also give it the mirror smooth reflection that everybody loves.

The first thing that you want to do after you pull the car out of the spray booth, is give it at least twenty four hours before you cut & buff it, it needs this time to harden correctly, or you risk causing more damage to the freshly painted car.

Now that the car has had it's twenty four hours to dry, we can wash it to get the dust off that my have settled on the surface of the paint, if you don't wash it, and the dust get's caught under the sand paper you'll scratch the car even worse.

Warnings:

1. There are two main reasons why some people shy away form cutting and buffing their car, the potential for damage to your new paint job is there, the first reason why people shy away, is that an inexperienced person may sand through the clear coat, causing a repaint.
2. An inexperienced person using the buffer may burn the paint work on the car, and this is also a repaint, as it is almost impossible to fix, and nobody want's to repaint an entire car because of a burn in the paint work.

The reason that I like to cut & buff the paint work that I do is quite simply, that nothing else can produce the smooth deep look that a good cut & buff does, nothing is as efficient at creating the mirror image look that cutting and buffing does.

The Color Sanding Process:

This is where the work starts, and were the problems can begin, do yourself a favor, and do not get in a hurry here, after the car has been re-masked you should get a bucket of warm water with a little bit of dish soap in it, or a spar bottle if it feels more comfortable.

After cleaning the surface of the car with water, you'll want to make sure that you have some 100 grit wet sand paper, and some 2000 grit wet sand paper, you'll need to load a hard rubber block up with the 100 grit paper to start the process.

After you load the 1000 grit wet sand paper on the block, we'll begin to sand the car, at the first it will seem as if it's not doing anything, but as you go you'll notice hat it is working, it's a slow process, and that's the what that you want it to be.

Plan on this to take most of the day if you have all day, if you hear squeaking sounds coming from the sand paper, wash the surface of the paint, and change your sand paper for a fresh piece, you'll need to sand the entire car, so watch what your doing.

After you have sanded that entire car with the 100 grit wet sand paper, we'll load up the 200 girt paper and sane the entire car with it, if your sanding a base coat clear coat paint, you'll want to be sure that you never see the base color of the car on your sanding block.

If you do see the base color as your sanding, you want to stop immediately, as you have sanded through the clear coat and in the the base coat of the car, and you'll be lucky if you can just repaint that area, with out causing other paint problems, like lifting.

So as I have said before, take your time and don't be hurried during that process, this is all it really takes to properly cut your car, I can't say it enough, if you do it right the first time, you will not have to do it over, and hope it works right.

The Buffing Process:

During this process we'll work through three stages of buffing compound, a a heavy; a medium; and a light stage, all three of these stages are required, if you want to go a step farther you can use a swirl remover to finish with, it's a very good idea to do it.

First we'll load up a old fashioned wool buffing pad on the buffer, and set your buffer to a medium speed, like 700 rpm and put some of the heavy compound on the car, and begin to buff, you should always try to keep the buffer flat to the surface of the car.

You should never turn the edge of the buffer in to your paint job, this will most likely burn your paint, and you will most certainly have to repaint your entire car, what your looking for as you buff the paint, is for the car to start shining up.

Once you have gone over the entire car with the heavy compound, you'll notice the the car has a dull shine on it, this mans that you have successfully completed the first stage of buffing your car, make sure that you haven't missed ay areas, and the clean the car with a rag.

You need to be 100% sure to remove as much of the residue from the heavy compound as you can, even if you need to wash the car again, after you have cleaned the residue off of the paint, you can put on a medium foam buffing pad.

With the use of the foam pads for the last two stages of buffing, you reduce the chance of burning your paint work, now that you have the medium foam buffing pad loaded on the buffer, you can put some medium compound on the car and begin to buff it.

You'll immediately notice that your paint is starting to look really good, it's starting to get the deep shine that we all love so much, after you have gone over the entire car with the medium buffing compound, you'll need to clean the residue off just like with the heavy compound.

After cleaning the medium buffing compound off of the car, you can move to the light compound, make sure to change out you medium foam buffing pad, for the light foam buffing pad, and follow the same steps as you did with the medium compound.

After this your all done, and your car should look great if you have followed these simple steps, you should be able to be proud of your car, and it paint job, now that it's all done, all we have left, is to unmask your car and go for a drive.