100% cotton towels for drying?

[medic159]

...almost nothing is made in this country...

Good God man, look around you, we have a huge manufacturing base here, if nothing was made here anymore we would be having food riots. So industrial parks are populated by abandoned buildings? Unemployment lines around the block, US citizens fleeing the country for work instead of illegals sneaking in for work? Did you know the US textile industry in the South is still twice as large as China, Pakistan, and India combined despite their inferior products coming in here?



Look, all it takes is to open your eyes and look around, we still have a huge manufacturing base second to none in the world. While we may have lost many jobs to unfair overseas competition and NAFTA we still have a lot here and we are known to make the best and highest quality products on the planet.

 

[Accumulator]

..Lets just face it, if your wife will use a cotton towel on your baby's little bottom and face do you really think it is going to hurt the paint on your vehicle!

Just be careful, and remember that things change. All 100% cotton towels aren't the same and some that start out nice and soft don't stay that way for long. I've marred all sorts of surfaces with high-quality 100% cotton that I *thought* would be OK. Not like it always happens, or that it can't happen with other materials, just saying to be careful.



Heh heh, the baby's bottom thing reminds me of when I'd tell people: "consider the paint to be as delicate as the surface of your eyeball, but remember that your eyeball can heal itself and paint can't"



And FWIW (which probably isn't much), I use far softer textiles on my paint than my parents ever used on me

 

[superstring]

I don't think it's necessarily the material, it's how the material is utilized. Spilchy says to apply the burn test to a cotton towel to see if there's any synthetic fibre in there. Well most MF towels are synthetic (DF Towels excluded, of course). I'm no materials scientist but it seems to me that the finer the individual strands of material, the finer the marring induced. Period. And the finer the marring, the less noticeable it is.

 

[Spilchy]

Spilchy says to apply the burn test to a cotton towel to see if there's any synthetic fibre in there. Well most MF towels are synthetic

98% will take that "synthetic" MF over a non-100% cotton towel any day to dry their vehicle



MF fibers are completely different than synthetic blended cotton fibers, as well as how the loops of these two fibers are cut.



Try it. Dry one side if your vehicle with a MF and the other with a non-100% cotton towel that turns black and plastic-like after the burn test. See which on swirls the finish



I'm not saying genuine 100% cotton towels are bad, but hunting them down, paying a premium, cutting off the non cotton edges and washing them a few times to get softer is unnecessary given how microfiber has completely revolutionized how we detail cars. My local swirl-o-matic car wash has even abandoned the bath towels that marred the hell out of cars and switched to MF's for wipe downs.



Change is good! MF has brought about progress and advancement for the hobby / business.

 

[David Fermani]

I'm not saying genuine 100% cotton towels are bad, but hunting them down, paying a premium, cutting off the non cotton edges and washing them a few times to get softer is unnecessary given how microfiber has completely revolutionized how we detail cars.

Kinda overboard a little. :hm Hunting down good MF's are a challenge too at times for some(not me). Most detailing vendors carry both MF and cotton. Plus, don't MF need to get washed a couple times to become super absorbant for drying applications too? I'm not anti-MF in any way, I just don't feel the need to (like some) exclusively just use them for any and all applications. :bow

 

[superstring]

98% will take that "synthetic" MF over a non-100% cotton towel any day to dry their vehicle



MF fibers are completely different than synthetic blended cotton fibers, as well as how the loops of these two fibers are cut.



Try it. Dry one side if your vehicle with a MF and the other with a non-100% cotton towel that turns black and plastic-like after the burn test. See which on swirls the finish



I'm not saying genuine 100% cotton towels are bad, but hunting them down, paying a premium, cutting off the non cotton edges and washing them a few times to get softer is unnecessary given how microfiber has completely revolutionized how we detail cars. My local swirl-o-matic car wash has even abandoned the bath towels that marred the hell out of cars and switched to MF's for wipe downs.



Change is good! MF has brought about progress and advancement for the hobby / business.

I'm a little confused, Spilchy. Are you agreeing with me? :think:

 

[chas.007]

for,high volume shops a water blade and a real chamois is the most efficent way of drying without all those problems with lint and steaks

 

[Spilchy]

I'm a little confused, Spilchy. Are you agreeing with me? :think:

No. Or maybe we're agreeing with each other? :help:



I was saying that even though MF's are synthetic, they are not the same synthetic as non-100% cotton towels that don't pass the burn test. So MF's are safe for your paint unlike non-100% cotton that has synthetic fibers in it.



Come on David, no need to hunt down MF's. You can find excellent microfiber at your finger tips on the Internet, everywhere from Autogeek, PakShak, Autopia store, Danase, Chemical Guys, Microfibertech and a handful of other places. Plus, no need to cut your towels!



Also, what type of cotton do you guys use? Egyptian, Supima, Upland, Upland Short (cheap) Asia Short (cheap). According to the FTC, the edging does not have to be cotton to have the label say 100% cotton.

 

[medic159]

I was saying that even though MF's are synthetic, they are not the same synthetic as non-100% cotton towels that don't pass the burn test. So MF's are safe for your paint unlike non-100% cotton that has synthetic fibers in it.

What are you talking about?

 

[Accumulator]

DFTowel- This might be a good time for your usual explanation regarding just what "microfiber" means. People tend to use the term "MF" in a man-made-material-centric way, which leaves out natural-material MFs. We both know that I'm guilty of this Given my usual :nono about linguistic sloppiness I know I oughta do better but everybody knows what's *usually* meant by "MF as opposed to cotton"...doesn't make it right though.

.. don't MF need to get washed a couple times to become super absorbant for drying applications too? I'm not anti-MF in any way, I just don't feel the need to (like some) exclusively just use them for any and all applications...

I too still use (regular, non-MF) cotton towels for a lot of things, still have some unopened bundles of the reserged Charismas that were popular a while back and some of the really nice (if small) towels from Emmonds and others, so it's not like I'm categorically opposed to them. But there really aren't all that many situations where a MF (of some kind) isn't superior. Still, if it's not broken I sure won't tell somebody to fix it



But no, MFs don't need to be laundered before use except to remove contamination from the manufacturing/packaging (gotta wash *any* textile IMO). The MFs that are designed for drying (e.g., waffle-weaves) are absorbent as soon as you unwrap them.

 

[martinez_0n]

:help: :help: What type of towels should i use to dry my Black 05 C230 komp sedan, i want to prevent from it having scratches???

 

[BobD]

A couple other places, including Zaino reccomend using only 100% made in the USA cotton bath towels for drying. They also reccomend staying away from micro fiber. :think2

I gotta admit I'm confused. I have found high quality bath towels on sale at places like Macys or those bath stores and always wondered about using them for drying. But I assumed they would cause swirls. Anybody use them? How are the results?

Doesn't Zaino also recommend washing your car with Dawn Dish Detergent?

 

[joshtpa]

Only the first time to get all of the prevoius LSP off.

 

[Eliot Ness]

:help: :help: What type of towels should i use to dry my Black 05 C230 komp sedan, i want to prevent from it having scratches???

I would buy at least two large, soft, and absorbent WW's (Waffle Weave) towels.



There are several vendors that sell very nice WW's such as Danase, PakShak, Autogeek, and Exceldetail ........ just to name a few. Autopia, however, is having a sale on the Sonus Ultimate Drying Towel which as nice as any I have found and at that price is hard to beat. Note that the picture on the web-site is the older style, the one they now sell has a satin binding and no tag to worry about having to remove.

 

[Accumulator]

:help: :help: What type of towels should i use to dry my Black 05 C230 komp sedan, i want to prevent from it having scratches???

Adding to what Eliot Ness posted, some vendors offer "extra soft" waffle-weaves, and IMO these can be worth getting. They don't absorb as much water though, so get a few extras. For your C-class I'd have four or more on hand...better too many than too few, especially if one somehow gets dirty.



But honestly, IMO 95% of the marring happens during the wash, not while drying.

 

[Eliot Ness]

.......some vendors offer "extra soft" waffle-weaves, and IMO these can be worth getting. They don't absorb as much water though, so get a few extras.......

Accumulator, I've been on a quest to find the softest WW's and I've been pleased to find several that appear to be made out of the same WWMF cloth. Yes they are thinner, but they are super soft and very absorbent. They might not hold as much water as the typical WW, but I find that they absorb it a lot fast faster which results in less surface contact/rubbing.



I'm embarrassed

 

[Eliot Ness]

.......some vendors offer "extra soft" waffle-weaves, and IMO these can be worth getting. They don't absorb as much water though, so get a few extras.......

Accumulator, I've been on a quest to find the softest WW's and I've been pleased to find several that appear to be made out of the same WWMF cloth. Yes they are thinner, but they are super soft and very absorbent. They might not hold as much water as the typical WW, but I find that they absorb it a lot fast faster which results in less surface contact/rubbing.



I'm embarrassed to say that I have had a couple of them for over two years and had never opened them (they were a Christmas present and somehow got packed away in a box I recently discovered). Those would be the Sonus towels. While the older ones had a stitched border instead of the satin binding they have now, they are just as soft and absorbent as the other WW's I recently bought.



I'm also embarrassed to say how much I have spent in WW's in the last two months, but now I have a very large stash and unless I plan on polishing, nothing dries my "good cars" except one of those extra soft WW's. Since those Sonus towels are on sale I even ordered a few to give to a couple of my street rod buddies up in Columbus.

 

[Accumulator]

Eliot Ness- Heh heh, once again our experiences/practices are similar (insert "Great Minds..." quip here ).



And I too haven't started using all my MF purchases; I even had Ranney call me up to see how I liked some "good car only towels" and had to admit that they're still unopened

 

[imported_Astral]

I don't use 100% cotton towels anymore. I bought the best white (no dye) cotton towels I could find in BB&B, paid I something like $25 for the bath size. Made in USA, 100% cotton, all that. The next "best" was a microfiber cotton towel.



I used them. OK, sure they were nice, but then when I did a CD test with them vs. a quality microfiber, I found that the 100% cotton towel scratched and the MF didn't. Sure, I had to rub pretty hard, and you probably aren't rubbing like that on paint. This is probably why Zaino can still recommend them: his products don't really require any force to apply or remove. Gentle does it.



But there's no question in my mind that cotton is just not as soft as the microfiber.



Consider then that MFs hold more water, clean better, and stay nicer despite being wet. You also don't have to machine dry MFs to get them to be fluffy again--air dry is all you need.



So basically, there is no reason in my mind to use cotton towels at all. I'll take a quality MF any day (and yes, I did scratch a CD with a poor quality MF towel from Autozone).



Mark my words: Zaino is probably researching MF towels right now, and in a year or two, they will come out with "Zaino Microfiber towels," marketed as the MF towels that finally meet their standards.





-----------



EDIT: I don't use MFs for everything. Quality MFs are the ones that touch my paint. Substandard MFs and the cotton towels I have are used for other purposes. For example, I dry my wheels with the cotton towels.

 

[superstring]

But there's no question in my mind that cotton is just not as soft as the microfiber.

Hey guys, I'm wondering how everyone defines "softness" and what that means in practical terms?



I own quite a few different MF clothes and some I would describe as "harsh" (by feel) and others I'd describe as "satin smooth". But do these descriptions in any way correspond to the way these clothes treat my paint? Perhaps the "harsh" MF just have more "grab" and, therefore, are better at removing residue. And, by the same token, maybe cotton, even though it might not be as "soft", is nontheless good at certain tasks (perhaps even better than MF in some instances)?



In other words, I don't think that "soft" is always "better". Opinions?