Wool, what am I missing?

I should be getting a LC 4" white wool pad soon but it is for a PC7424 and I will try it on my hood and roog on my black Lexus. Any advice? I know people generally use wool with rotaries but I don't have one so I will be experimenting with the PC7424 and wool. The LC orange foam pads did not get out some of things and I did not like how the yellows were working, on some occasions they caused all these small fine circular scratches that I could not get back out, maybe there was a grit of sand or something in the foam pad but I stopped using them, it happened twice. Never had any experience with wool but some people said it generally has better correcting ability then foam and takes less time. The LC description says the design leaves none to very little buffing wool marks. I am not going to use a heavy compound but Menzerna IP.
 
lexusgs said:
I should be getting a LC 4" white wool pad soon but it is for a PC7424 and I will try it on my hood and roog on my black Lexus. Any advice? I know people generally use wool with rotaries but I don't have one so I will be experimenting with the PC7424 and wool. The LC orange foam pads did not get out some of things and I did not like how the yellows were working, on some occasions they caused all these small fine circular scratches that I could not get back out, maybe there was a grit of sand or something in the foam pad but I stopped using them, it happened twice. Never had any experience with wool but some people said it generally has better correcting ability then foam and takes less time. The LC description says the design leaves none to very little buffing wool marks. I am not going to use a heavy compound but Menzerna IP.
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For a yellow foam pad, it's actually normal for them to introduce micromarring or "fine circular scratches" as you have described. In order to get rid of those, it's best to follow the yellow with a polishing pad and a light polish.



I've never used wool on a PC so I'm not exactly sure what kind of results you're going to get on a 4" wool pad.
 
lexusgs said:
I should be getting a LC 4" white wool pad soon but it is for a PC7424 and I will try it on my hood and roog on my black Lexus. Any advice?
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My advice is to not try it :grinno:



I've used (~6") wool pads via PC and all they did was leave a lot more (not so-)micromarring while contributing little added aggressiveness compared to foam cutting pads. If the Lexus paint is soft (I was working on a very hard Audi) you might make things harder to fix than they are not.



But I was using I-forget-what-brand wool pads and maybe the 4" LC ones will act completely different :nixweiss I absolutely would not try it myself though, and certainly not on a black are that I cared about. But hey, if it works out, well, great... I'll be glad to hear about it.



[EDIT: Ah, the pad in question *is* very different from what I tried...so "never mind" about the dire warnings above :D ]



I do find it a little odd that you can't get the correction you want with the various 4" cutting pads though :think: Although it takes a while, I can pretty much remove anything that's shallow enough/safe to remove with those, even on the Audis. I recently reduced a RIDS as far as I wanted to go on the Denali XL (also pretty hard clear) using the PC/4". I sorta wonder if all the marring you want to remove is really *safe* to remove..don't wanna thin that clear too much ;)



Gee, don't *I* sound all pessimistic :o
 
Accumulator said:
My advice is to not try it :grinno:



I've used (~6") wool pads via PC and all they did was leave a lot more (not so-)micromarring while contributing little added aggressiveness compared to foam cutting pads. If the Lexus paint is soft (I was working on a very hard Audi) you might make things harder to fix than they are not.



But I was using I-forget-what-brand wool pads and maybe the 4" LC ones will act completely different :nixweiss I absolutely would not try it myself though, and certainly not on a black are that I cared about. But hey, if it works out, well, great... I'll be glad to hear about it.



I do find it a little odd that you can't get the correction you want with the various 4" cutting pads though :think: Although it takes a while, I can pretty much remove anything that's shallow enough/safe to remove with those, even on the Audis. I recently reduced a RIDS as far as I wanted to go on the Denali XL (also pretty hard clear) using the PC/4". I sorta wonder if all the marring you want to remove is really *safe* to remove..don't wanna thin that clear too much ;)



Gee, don't *I* sound all pessimistic :o
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Thanks for the heads up, supposidly LC says the design of those pads are not supposed to introduce marring or very little but I will see. It was really cheap like 4.75 so I decided to see how it does and threw it in with an order of collinite 475, nattys blue, and more orange pads. I will only try it on a small area and see what kind of finish it leaves, if it leaves marks I will stop using. The small circular marks/nicks left by the yellow LC CCS pads could not really be removed by the orange pads and seemed more like nicks in the paint which led me to believe it might have a grain of sand/dirt or picked up some sand that was in the pad or something but who knows.



The roof, hood, and spoiler has some hard water/etching spots that just could not be removed with the yellow or orange pads with IP no matter how many passes/pushing down so I figured something stronger might be needed. As far as going through the clear I am cautious but this car has never been polished once before a did it a few months ago so there should still be plenty of clear left. Also I am kind of debating that I might just respray the hood, front bumper, and roof one of these days as it has just picked up too many ugly stone chips and has some ugly etching spots from bird crap/tree sap or something that cannot be removed but that will be down the road as I don't have any experience using a sprayer on cars and would need to learn and buy the equipment.
 
lexusgs said:
I should be getting a LC 4" white wool pad soon but it is for a PC7424 and I will try it on my hood and roog on my black Lexus. Any advice? I know people generally use wool with rotaries but I don't have one so I will be experimenting with the PC7424 and wool. The LC orange foam pads did not get out some of things and I did not like how the yellows were working, on some occasions they caused all these small fine circular scratches that I could not get back out, maybe there was a grit of sand or something in the foam pad but I stopped using them, it happened twice. Never had any experience with wool but some people said it generally has better correcting ability then foam and takes less time. The LC description says the design leaves none to very little buffing wool marks. I am not going to use a heavy compound but Menzerna IP.
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Could you provide a link to that pad? I've been trying to hunt down this new white wool pad with no luck. I'm wondering if it's the same one that Scottwax is using.
 
TH0001 said:
I think its important to note that for the most part we are buffing on clear coat. I know this is kind of basic, but think about this...



Most manufacturer's use the same clear coat over different base coats, so the only difference in color is in the base coat. The clear coat remains the same. (Of course their are obvious exceptions, BMW's harder clear on Sapphire Black and the stupidly soft clear on Jet Black).



This makes brings me to my point... Since a black base coat reflects the most light thru the clear coat, you can see maximum defect levels. Black most accurately shows the condition of the clear coat above it. So if foam is needed to finish out the clear coat to perfection on a black car, then it is really needed on every car to achieve perfection.



Obviously the benefits of finishing out a black car more completely are much more dramatic then finishing out the same clear coat over a silver car. In the black car you might see a 10% improvement, where as on a silver car you may be lucky to see 2%, for the same time invested.



In my experience with wool, you can never get a car 100 percent perfect with it because the fibers will instill light marring in the paint surface (or more light marring then a foam pad, because under a high enough magnification, nothing is perfect). Since this type of marring can be seen to diffuse the paint on black, then it is also diffusing the light on other color's as well. To get the highest gloss we must level the paint as flat as possible to get maximum light reflection. This law is true for all colors, regardless wether we see the defects or not.



So the achieve true maximum gloss on silver, we have to polish out defects that we cannot even see.



a140.jpg
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Great post Todd, and I certainly agree with the premise that if you need to finish down with foam on black paint to get the clear coat above it in close to perfect condition, you need to do the same with all colors to get the most out of them.



Regarding the statement that "black base coat reflects the most light thru the clear coat", it was my understanding that black actually reflects less light than any other color?



I think that fact makes swirls/defects more noticeable than colors that reflect more light because you get less refraction. Does that make sense? :nixweiss
 
Ah, OK, that looks *VERY* different from the one I tried. Gee, everybody's selling different kinds of wool pads these days.
 
lexusgs said:
..The roof, hood, and spoiler has some hard water/etching spots that just could not be removed...
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Water etching can be tough. My wife's A8 and our Denali XL both have nasty etching that resisted even aggressive rotary work. We're just living with it for fear of thinning the clear too much.
 
I tried it out last night and it worked pretty good. The LC white wool pad did not leave any marring of trails or nicks like I was concerned it might and finished just like a orange foam. It was quicker to work with then a foam pad in that it broke the polish down quicker but in certain situations the orange foam was able to correct a defect better like some wet sanding marks which when I switched to an orange foam pad they completely went away but with the foam there was still a foggy appearance from where I wet sanded. It would lose some fine pieces of wool that you would see on the car but in all I think it was worth the little money I spent on it.
 
lexusgs said:
The roof, hood, and spoiler has some hard water/etching spots that just could not be removed with the yellow or orange pads with IP no matter how many passes/pushing down so I figured something stronger might be needed.
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Instead of a different pad, why not try something stronger than IP? It doesn't have a heavy cut.
 
U are very much correct, SuperBee addition to theory, Wool; dissipates HEAT thru the fibers and Foam;transmits the heat back in the surface(Finish). Loyalty, always use VARIOUS wool pads for,after wet-sanding,and any imperfection removal process. Have a GREATDAY U and your family!!!
 
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