HD Cut Review by Greg Gellas

Greg Gellas

I'm Greg :)
Here is my review of HD Cut. Thanks to Tunch for letting us test this, and David and Barry for answering the phone :) I put this product up against M105, Scholls S3 Gold, and Menzerna FG400.



Cut 1-5: 4

I gave it a 4 due to the length of time needed to get similar cut compared to other products. You really need to work it longer to get similar cut that other products can produce.



Ease of use 1-5: 4

I’ll explain why it only got a 4 later on in the review. It is pretty much similar to other products



Dusting 1-5: 4

There wasn't a lot of dust. Adding more product to try to remove product did produce more dust. Less then 105, and on par with S3 gold, the FG was right in the middle of them both.



Work time 1-5 : 5

You can work this product for quite a while, and you may need to to get the correction you want.



Removal from surface 1-5 : 1

I would have given 105 a 1 also. As I was working with a re-painted hood, and one that is super soft, I had issues with removal. Some of you may or may not have experienced this with 105. It forms a strong bond with the painted surface and the only way to remove it is with another polish, or a liquid like IPA. The 105 also "adhered" to the surface while the S3 and FG both wiped off easier.

The top left corner is the HD cut after a wipe down with a MF towel. Below is 105, hard to check your work when the polish gets stuck to the surface. Due to the lack of visibility, after those two products I pulled the tape and removed the HD Cut and 105. The only way for me to remove it was with another polish, although the same went for 105. Not as big of a deal as I would always do a pass with a polish after cutting to clear up the paint. I tried it on other panels that weren't resprayed and got similar adhesion issues.

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Finish after use 1-5 : ?

I couldn’t get to it due to the adhesion it had to the paint. I can’t give an honest assessment as I went over the area with a finishing polish to remove HD Cut from the surface.



Flexibility with various machines 1-5 : 5

I used it with a GG, HD polisher, and a Rupes LhR15. It worked well with all of the machines. I also varied the pad I was using from surbuff to MF to orange foam. It didn’t mind being used with any of them.



Smell (or lack of) 1-5 :5

It has no distinguishing smell.



Labeling 1-5 : 4

Is it just me or do all the HD bottles form indentations? No I didn't squeeze the air out they naturally tend to indent after a few uses. The black bottles are cool, and the labels are nice. A new top to reduce mess would be cool.

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HD Cut

I had a different situation than others, in that I was working with a re-sprayed hood, and soft paint. My results seem to be an anomaly compared to others.

For my heads up comparison I used a new MF pad, same amount of pressure, and the same work time for all of the products. After playing with it for a few hours I can say that it cuts, not as fast as 105. You need to work it longer to get the same amount of correction. It does have a longer working time, but doesn't cut as fast.

I did have the adhesion issue, which I also had with 105. This isn't the first time this has happened to 105 for me so it wasn't a huge deal. For this paint I would have had to go to another step anyway, but if I was doing a 1 step and got this adhesion issue that could have been a problem.



Once I get different paint to play with, I will try HD Cut again and give an update.



Thanks Greg Gellas
 
I'm having the same adhesion issue. Softer paints seem to exacerbate the issue. On the plus side, I can follow with HD Polish and it cleans it right up and leaves a pretty nice finish.
 
Thanks for the honest review Greg and that's exactly what we're looking for! Like we talked about last night, I find it interesting that the non-deminishing products (CUT/M105) created these identical issues, but the deminishing ones didn't? I'm glad (to a small degree) that M105 reacted the same way which leads me to believe that this was indeed an isolated issue based on this unique paint. I really hope that you keep trying HD CUT on more paints in hopes that it will give you the results it is created to deliver. Please keep us updated with your results.
 
I don't have enough play time with it yet, but I also had severe adhesion issues on soft paint today. The Cut residue almost became part of the paint, and the residue only came off with IPA. This is the first time I've used any from the bottle David sent me, but I did use a small sample that Shawn Fremin picked up from another detailer who got the sample at SEMA. The car I used that on was polar opposite-the paint was hard as a rock, and I had no "stickiness" issues on that car. I'm hoping the formula hasn't changed from the SEMA sample, because I was pretty impressed with that one.
 
Excellent and honest review Greg! Props! That's what I love to see in a review. I have had that issue with M105 plenty of times. freaked me out the very first time, lol
 
Greg Gellas said:
The black bottles are cool, and the labels are nice. A new top to reduce mess would be cool.

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Good observation on the top too. 3D has 60,000 updated self cleaning caps on order and will be standard issue with the bottles shortly.



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i have adhesion issue with most smat products on my soft black toyota paint.. following it with wax from the same brand or finishing polish usually solves the problem; it seems that we trade slinging dusts from dat with adhesion in smat. props to autopia and greg gellas for being the first to coin this adhesion term. I tried to sound this point accross with another well known smat product rep but all he could say was there was none but glorious feedback of his product. looking forward to posts on better technique we can use to avoid this..
 
After using Hd Cut the other day, I can say that I did not get the difficult removal I did with the original formulation. I will keep working with it and update with a more detailed update later.
 
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