Sam Battersbay talks about the painting treatment process while Forrest Davis reminds us of the extreme importance of using lights of various types in automotive detailing.
Enjoy.
AM:What is your process with regard to paint?
SB: Primarily, poring over every square inch of the car. This one [the black 1968 Lamborghini Islero shown in photos] we didn’t have to decontaminate or clay because it wasn’t driven often prior, so we could get straight to paint correction. We essentially dusted it off with a detail spray, used the surface wipe product to strip off the old protectant, then did a three-step polish because the paint on this car is very soft and responds differently to an OEM paint to polishing. Before polishing we’ll remove or tape-off any rubber or even chrome trim so it doesn’t get damaged. We did a moderate cut, it didn’t have heavy defects but there were some scratches we had to spend some time on. Then we did a polish and a second polish. The first polish didn’t get it as perfect as we want in terms of removing all the hazing and fogging that the first step put in, so the second polish helped to fix that. We do all that by machine, then apply our Best of Show wax by hand. We spent probably 20 machine hours over the course of three days.
FD: Another thing when we’re doing this is light. We’ll use a lot of different flash lights, we’ll use lights for looking at the paint surface constantly. If we’re polishing a section, we’ll have the reflection of a high-intensity, usually LED, light bouncing off the paint so we can see exactly what’s happening as we’re polishing. It’s the same thing with the engine bay also.
The most important part is we’re looking at the reflection of the bulb in the paint surface to find defects. You can walk it back, up and down to see scratches. Without using lights, you’ll see perfect paint, but that’s not what you’ll see when the sun’s shining on the car.
