lecchilo said:
SuperBee I'm in your position with M105, well where you were in the past... I tried it, liked it, had some trouble with it, and sort of gave up on it to use M95 as it was easier... now I'm going back to experimenting with M105, old and new, and hopefully seeing it through. If you don't mind me asking, what is your rotary method that you've come to be so satisfied with over the past year?
Hey, you know me... any invitation I get to run my big mouth, I'll take!
Seriously, though, that's exactly what I went through. If it hadn't been for Greg Nichols, I woulda just given up on the stuff. The man is a darn good detailer and teacher. One piece of his sage advice: "Hey, Supe, never point your high pressure wand at a car unless you've already test sprayed it and made sure the metal tip isn't gonna come flying off at a high rate of speed, mmmkay?":nervous2:
Disclaimer: This is all stuff I found to work well with the old formula 105. I don't have a clue if it would work with the new stuff. My gallon of new stuff gets here today! Also, there's going to be some things here that may contradict what I've said in earlier postings about 105 and how I use it, too. Things change over time and experience with a product.
Anyway.... to start off, I like to vary the pad and stick with the same polish (105) for all *correction*. For finishing or intermediate polishing, I stick with a pad (either no bite foam or finishing wool), and vary the polish.
Pick a pad that is appropriate for the condition and hardness of the paint,
keeping in mind that 105 can only finish down as well as the pad you are using will allow it to. (that's also the reason I use a no bite pad for intermediate polishing and finishing, but that's another discussion entirely). If the paint is really hammered and in need of serious correction, I'll use an Edge double twisted wool pad.
In order of aggressiveness, my pad choices for use with 105:
1. Black Edge wool
2. Yellow Edge wool
3. Purple foamed wool. My personal favorite, as you can do serious correction with this pad, and if you do your last few passes with very light pressure, you can get a lot of paints to finish down holo free and ready for final polishing.
4. Any no bite foam finishing pad. 105 and a no bite foam pad is an incredible combination. I use this instead of SIP now. When ever you'd reach for SIP, give this a shot. Start out with medium pressure, and finish with a few passes using just the weight of the buffer. Once again, this is where the small abrasives strut their stuff; they are able to finish out as well as they can without any interference from the pad's bite. It really shows off 105's finishing ability.
How to explain the actual usage... Not an easy task..
This applies to whatever pad you're using 105 with.. I used to (this is subject to change after what I've learned in this thread) start off by misting the pad with a bit of FK425. Then I would put four small pea sized dots on the pad. Now this is the part that's hard to explain, so bear with me... Normally, at this point I would outline what I call my "polish box"; I'd spread the polish around in a 2'x2' (or so) box without the buffer running, then I'd turn on the buffer at slow speed, and again spread the polish evenly through the "box". You can't do that with 105, or it'll flash over before you can even get your machine turned on. After you've applied the four dots to your pad, you "hit the ground running": turn on the buffer and start working the polish immediately. Go until you think you're about half way to the time that the polish is going to flash on you. This amount of time is extremely variable, and you'll just have to experiment with how long the working time is for the conditions of that day. I only keep going into fresh paint until I'm at the halfway time point. I also use pressure as appropriate for the amount of cutting I need. At the halfway time point, I ease off on the pressure to just a bit more than the weight of the machine, and go back over the paint I've been working on until the polish flashes. If you timed it right, you should be right back to where you started from. One or two passes with light pressure is what your shooting for to get the best finish.
At this point, a lot of guys have good luck with spritzing the surface with distilled water and working the 105 until it dries again. I never had much luck doing that.
105 really performs well when your pad is saturated with the polish. Once a pad is saturated, it takes very little 105 per application, and you'll find that you have plenty more working time. It's weird... the more saturated the pad is, the longer the working time you'll get before flash over. And that's great, because you can stop anytime you want. Just remember that
the finish you get is highly dependent on the pressure you used for the last few passes, and the pad you used.
Until you get used to the working time, you'll probably find yourself in a situation where the polish has flashed, and you didn't have enough time to do the light pressure passes. No worries, just apply some fresh 105 and do your light pressure passes. Sorry to seem like I'm getting really basic here, but this is quite different than what you'd do with a traditional polish and breaking it down correctly.
Also, once a pad is saturated, you might find that adding additional polish just exacerbates the whole flashing problem and polish sticking on paint. If your pad gets to that point, don't take it off! You've hit the "sweet spot". Keep polishing using no additional polish! You can keep going until you're no longer seeing any cutting/polishing going on. At that point, spur (or brush) the heck out of the pad, apply four more dots, and start the process over again.
It's really cool when your pad gets to the saturation point. There's hardly any residue left behind, and you can immediately see (without having to look through residue) at the result you are getting. It feels pretty strange to buff out a whole section of a car without seeing any residue left behind or using any additional polish. The first time I did this, I kept thinking, "What are you doing?? You're *dry buffing* this paint! whatareyoumental?" You'll get over it fast when you see the results, though.
Hopefully this helps.... but again, it's probably already obsolete information.
Last edit, I think:
I found that high rpm's on a rotary did not work well with 105 at all. I pretty much stick with 1k-1.2k.
But I gotta qualify that one.. Rick was giving a Soft Buff 2.0 sample to everyone that bought a certain product from him last year. So it was a freebie that was available to everyone, and not a freebie like what a shill would get. That's my story, and you can't prove otherwise! :nana: