Buffing out orange peel.

Great Lakes Greg

Great Lakes Greg

Well-known member
I have always wet sanded, then used progressively finer rubbing compounds to get a nice glossy finish. I have heard about skipping the sanding and using just the polish, starting with something more aggressive.
Is this fantasy talk, or is there something to it? I don't mind the sanding so much, but will gladly hang up the paper if there is a way around it.
 
if you use only compounds you will have one big ripple from one end to the other. to sand out orange peel you want to make the surface flat and smooth with different blocks or pads. then you make it shine with compounds. I go some times as rough as 800 to start and down to 3000 before I rub.
 
I, being and inexperience painter, while painting my Huckster a few years ago, did a very good job of painting a lot of Orange peel. Like you mentioned, I just use aggressive polishing compound to start with and gradually went to a very less aggressive. Takes some time but it does work. It also can leave places where you have to go back and repaint if you get to aggressive. I did a very bad job on one of my fenders by trying to sand it because I wanted to get it done "fast". Still have that problem on that fender. At this point I don't remember the brand of polish I used but I found one of them worked much better than others. Maybe tomorrow if I think about it, I will check the brand and post it.
 
Being that I've probably sanded and buffed around 1,000 cars, I don't see how you could get a finish as good as wet sanding and buffing by just buffing. Yes you could just buff the paint, but it would take you for ever to get the paint flat. Buffing is essentially a less aggressive form of grinding. It works best/fastest when all of the "cutting" has already been done. A wool or foam pad, whichever you use, simply does not have the grit to take paint off as fast as sand paper. Yes there is grit in the compounds, but not that much. You will waste more compound, therefore more $ and time trying to get it buffed slick with no sanding. Every car I've ever sanded and buffed, I wet sand with 2000 grit only, no matter how bad the orange peel or trash, then buff with 3m's purple buffing compound #1 then polish with 3m's purple machine polish #2. There is a #3 polish, but I haven't found a need for it. I've buffed and polished paint slick enough that you could count each individual tree branch on a medium size tree in the reflection of the paint of a tree that was probably 75 feet away.
 
i used John Deere high gloss black implement paint on my truck when i restored it. it recomended 10 parts paint to one part thinner but we mixed it 11 parts paint and 1 part thinner and sprayed it at 100 degrees. it flowed out with no orange peel and then we just polished it, turned out like glass
 
Buffing will not remove orange peel, it should be color sanded first to knock down the high spots (orange peel) then buffed.

The buffing pad follows the contour of the paint so all one ends up with is shiny orange peel......that's how it has worked for me. I know it's a lot of work but worth it in the end.
 
#5 said it all

have to wonder just where this advice came from:
" I have heard about skipping the sanding and using just the polish"

sometimes it is hard to stop the myths from overpowering reality
 
On my town sedan, I've been lightly block sanding with 800 grit to start it off, But Hey! I'm the world's worst painter. I don't just have orange peel, I have runs too, not many, but they're there
I've broken through the paint in at least 4 or 5 places. It's going to be a long job!
Terry
 
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Orange peel is the result of the paint not flowing out. Generally because an inadequate amount of reducer. The reducer not only thins the viscosity of the paint but also slows the drying time. Too much air pressure can also result in orange peel.
Washing the new paint with cold water and rubbing the palm of your hand on the paint will help. Keep water between your hand and the new paint. Do this several time a day for several days. Another way to get the paint to lay down is let it sit in the sun for a few weeks. After the paint lays down and you are not satisfied then you might want to color sand and rub the paint out.
Good luck...fun hobby.
 
You can only level a surface by using a block sanding.

What you might be missing is the level of grit for the color sanding. There are the foam pads that go up to like 4000 grit. Look up Abralon sanding pads.
 
Guys I've watched, just wet sad the tops of the orange peel & don't go far enough to DULL the WHOLE surface.
I knew a Guy who paid EXTRA, to get the "modern" ORANGE PEEL look on a Caddy!
Bill Observer
 
I knew a Guy who paid EXTRA, to get the "modern" ORANGE PEEL look on a Caddy!
Bill Observer


I don't understand the crappy paint jobs modern cars receive. You'd think for the price of a new car it would at least have a good paint job.:confused:
 
Okay, thanks experts. I guess the old saying "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" applies here. If you will excuse me, I have some sanding to do.
 
OK, but as you sand, use a little soap in the water. It will lubricate the sand paper and make your job easier and more successful.
 
Detailers will use the technique of compounding to replace the water sanding. They use a high speed polisher and coarse compound to start. This is what does the cutting of the wet sandpaper. Then they work it down with finer polishes until there finished. It works but it seems to be as much work as watersanding and creates alot of mess. I'll stick with my coloursanding and polishing.

John Poole.
 
OK Having read this thread it is time to understand what is going on here. WARNING the science teacher in me is forcing its way out! :D

Orange peel is caused by paint that has not fully flowed out to a perfectly flat surface. On a microscopic level the surface of the paint is like a landscape of gently rolling hills. To get a perfect reflection you have to get the surface of the paint perfectly FLAT. Now if you just use compound, the compound (regardless of grit size) is made up of abrasive particles suspended in a liquid. Since the particles are free to move within the liquid, as you buff they abrade both the tops of the hills and the valleys. The landscape does NOT get flatter it just get smoother. You will get just shinier orange peel. To be honest the tops of the hills get abraded a little faster than the valleys since they experience more pressure from the buffing wheel, but you are still wearing down the valleys along with the hill tops. By the time you reach anything approaching flat either all your paint, or your resolve, will be gone!

The abrasive on wet/dry sand paper is glued to flat piece of paper which is in turn affixed to a flat sanding block. The abrasive particles are NOT free to move. So when you run the paper over the rolling hills landscape of your paint only the tops of the hills are abraded away. The landscape starts to become flat. Unfortunately the abrasive particles of the sand paper create their own much smaller valleys (more like scratches) as they work. Each succeeding finer grit sand paper removes the new scratches caused by the preceding courser grit paper leaving in their wake their own still smaller scratches. The course compounding just smooths out the final tiniest scratches of the finest paper, and you guessed it, leaves behind its own even smaller scratches! So we go through a series of finer and finer grit compounds to remove almost all the scratches. At that point the scratches are so fine that they have no visible effect on the reflected light and we have a perfect reflection and a perfect finish!!!

BTW if you go all the way up to 5000 grit paper you will start to get a good reflection even before you start compounding.

BTW2 Yes the scratches left in a less than perfect wet sanding/buffing job can be filled with wax and the appearance will improve. But the effect is only temporary. Wax is used to protect your perfect finish NOT create it.

Wow! that was a lot of typing! I am tired. Going to bed! I hope this enlightened you on the science behind color sanding paint.
 
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