How to Cut & Buff Your Car

In this ehow I will show you how to cut and buff you paint job.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Electric Buffer with speed control.
• Wet Or Dry 1000 and 200 grit sand paper
• Three buffer pads, one wool pad, and a medium and light foam pad
• Three steps of buffing compound, light, medium, and heavy compounds.

1. Get a bucket of water, or if you don't want to use a bucket, you can use a spray bottle, or your water hose turned low.
   
   Spray the car down with water, and clean all of the dust off of it.

2. Now that you have sprayed the car down with water load up your 1000 grit wet sand paper on a sanding block, I usually use a 6" hard flat block on the large flat surfaces of the car, you never want to sand or buff the crown of any panel on your car, I use a 6" round hard rubber round block in the curved areas on the panels, at the first it will look as if it's not doing anything, but take my word it is smoothing the clear coat on your car, when you colour sand you clear coat you need to pay serious attention to what you are doing, cutting and buffing will remove any dust or runs from you paint job and smooth the surface to a brilliant deep shine.

3. When you start to sand the car, if your using a spray bottle you'll spray some of the contents from the bottle on to your painted surface, and then you'll begin to sand the clear coat with 1000 grit wet paper, make sure that you sand only in one direction, as it will be easier to buff out in the end, do not press hard on the block, let the sand paper do the work, and if you hear a squeaking sound stop now, and run some water over your sanding block and the surface of the car, a squeaking sound means that you have a piece of balled up clear coat under the block, or dirt, in either case, you do not want it there so clean the block and surface of the car.

4. When your sanding your paint with the 1000 grit paper, your looking for the entire surface of the car to have a smooth and dull appearance, remember that you still have to sand the clear coat with 1500 and 2000 grit sand paper, so it does not need to be perfect at this stage of the game, just make sure that you've sanded the entire surface of the car before you move on to the next stage.

5. Now you'll repeat the same process with 1500 grit wet paper, and then 2000 grit wet paper, after you have done this, you done colour sanding or cutting the clear coat, during this process yo don't ever want to see the colour of your base coat on the sanding block, this means that you have gone through the clear coat, so pay attention to what you are doing.

6. Now that the cutting or colour sanding process is complete on your car, you'll want to wash all the wet sanding residue from the car, wet sanding will leave a with powder type residue on the car, and you don't want to put the buffer to this residue, so make sure that you wash the entire car again before you get started with the buffer.

7. Now let's get the buffer out and set the speed to about 800 rpm or medium speed on the speed selector, this may seem a bit slow, but you have less of a chance of burning the paint job with it set at a lower speed, and you can use water to help cool the paint as you buff the car if you want to, you'll be starting with a heavy buffing compound and working all the way down to a swirl remover, yet another long process.

8. Now put a little dab of the heavy cutting compound on the surface of the car where you want to start buffing the paint, and also I almost forgot, this needs to be done inside a garage, the sun will cause big problem with this process, what your going to do is put a wool pad on the buffer, and then pull the buffer trigger and begin to buff the heavy cutting compound off of the car, you'll notice it starting to bring the shine up on the surface of the paint, when you run out of the heavy compound on the surface just keep adding more and moving in slow circular motions until the entire surface is buffed with the heavy compound.

9. You'll repeat this process with medium cutting compound, and then light compound, and last but not least swirl remover.

10. When you change compounds you'll want to have the appropriate foam pads for each step in the process, and make sure that you clean all the pads as they will get clogged with compound, you can can a pad cleaning tool from your local auto paint retailer.

Tips & Warnings

• Always use all three stages of the compound
• Make sure that you get all the flaws out of your paint
• Always finish with a swirl remover
• Do not sand through your paint
• Be very careful with the buffer not to burn your paint

Resources

• How To Cut & Buff

[dcatkin]

on 11/19/2009 I would not use a universal compound, or a wool pad the swirl remover.

[dcatkin]

on 9/3/2009 Yes you can use 1000 and then 2000.

I would not recommend the use of universal compound, I know it sounds faster, but just take the time if you want it right.

I would use the wool pad to do the heavy work, and the foam pads for the rest of it.

Yes I would wait for a week before I cut & buff the car.

[vanaikee]

on 9/2/2009 hi, can i go with 1000 and then 2000, also buff with universal rubbing compound then swirl remover? can i use wool for the swirl remover? or is it advisable to use foam pads for when using swirl remover? another is that do i have to wait for a week before i sand the clear after painting it, some says a week to waitt before buffing to let the coats dry?? this will really help me alot.. thanks and i'll wait for any reply