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PC
Obi Wan
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Recently, on another thread, we'd been discussing electric polishers. One hears many anecdotes warning of the dangers of electric polishers. Indeed, you'll often hear folks expressing disdain for powered polishers and insisting that their cars only be polished by hand.
Now it is true any power tool can be misused. You can certainly screw up a paint job with a power polisher. For anyone who insists that hand polishing is the only way to go I'd like to suggest a field trip.
On a nice warm sunny day** go wander around a parking lot full of cars. Look at their paint. Look especially closely at dark cars, black, blue, red, green. Some will look good. Many will be a mess. You'll see lots of cars covered with swirl marks.
Do these swirls show the telltale arcs of a poorly handled rotary buffer? Do they exhibit the hazy stripes of a misapplied random orbital polisher? I'll bet they don't. I'll bet you won't find even a single one that does.
What you will see are the aimless rambling swirls of misguided hands. That's what I've seen (and living in the freeway traffic capitol of the world I see an awful lot of cars).
So is hand polishing more dangerous than machine polishing? If you go only by the numbers of cars with messed up paint you'd have to answer yes but the fact is it's more complicated than that. The machine, be it orbital, rotary or biological, works as a system with the chemicals, pads and cloths used.
Hand polishing is certainly safe when done correctly. Judging from the sheer numbers of swirled up cars a lot of people out there don't. What machines do give are consistency and speed that no human hand can match. Used correctly this can translate into higher quality results, faster and safely.
So whether you choose to work by hand or machine pick your products carefully and use them wisely. Your LBC will thank you.
PC.
** like we've had this last week here in Southern California
[ 01-19-2004: Message edited by: PC ]</p>
Now it is true any power tool can be misused. You can certainly screw up a paint job with a power polisher. For anyone who insists that hand polishing is the only way to go I'd like to suggest a field trip.
On a nice warm sunny day** go wander around a parking lot full of cars. Look at their paint. Look especially closely at dark cars, black, blue, red, green. Some will look good. Many will be a mess. You'll see lots of cars covered with swirl marks.
Do these swirls show the telltale arcs of a poorly handled rotary buffer? Do they exhibit the hazy stripes of a misapplied random orbital polisher? I'll bet they don't. I'll bet you won't find even a single one that does.
What you will see are the aimless rambling swirls of misguided hands. That's what I've seen (and living in the freeway traffic capitol of the world I see an awful lot of cars).
So is hand polishing more dangerous than machine polishing? If you go only by the numbers of cars with messed up paint you'd have to answer yes but the fact is it's more complicated than that. The machine, be it orbital, rotary or biological, works as a system with the chemicals, pads and cloths used.
Hand polishing is certainly safe when done correctly. Judging from the sheer numbers of swirled up cars a lot of people out there don't. What machines do give are consistency and speed that no human hand can match. Used correctly this can translate into higher quality results, faster and safely.
So whether you choose to work by hand or machine pick your products carefully and use them wisely. Your LBC will thank you.
PC.
** like we've had this last week here in Southern California
[ 01-19-2004: Message edited by: PC ]</p>
