When polishing clearcoat you're essentially cleaning any defects from the window glass to give it more clarity, offering a much better view of what's on the other side. This can be likened to peering out of a window. So, with this in mind, two stage paintwork means that you're not really touching the colour pigment at all, just the clearcoat. Candy paints are similar in application, but essentially, they get their extra-deep appearance from multiple coats of tinted lacquer. This includes metallic and pearlescent paints which have aluminium powder or ceramic crystals mixed into the base coat to reflect and refract light, bringing on the sparkle. This means that the paint (above the primer layer) is applied in two stages - the coloured base coat, followed by a protective clearcoat (lacquer). Two Stage PaintworkJust about every car since the mid-1980s uses two stage paintwork. ![]() The real questions here then, are: how intense does the polishing need to be? And how much of the surface layer do you need to take away? Well, this is directly proportional to the defects you're trying to tackle in what kind of paintwork. It's exactly the same idea when polishing paintwork, just on a more infinitesimal level. Following up with varying degrees of finer sandpaper smooths the surface to a level that's pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye. A coarse sandpaper will take away a large amount of material quickly, but leave a noticeably unrefined finished. Think of it as just like sanding down a block of wood. While a finer finishing compound or polish will have a much less aggressive level of cut, and be designed to smooth out the surface on an even more microscopic level, inflicting scratches so tiny that they simply can't be seen. A coarse cutting compound for example, will be more abrasive and remove more of the surface material more quickly. What distinguishes say, cutting and refining from one another is the intensity of the products used for the desired result. Polishing then, is a bit like exfoliating for cars! ![]() This also causes light to bounce off in a more uniform direction, levelling the optical finish, making the surface appear deeper and shiner. This in turn smooths out the defects creating a flatter surface. For the most part, the process involves abrading the top layer to remove a microscopic amount. Polishing, whether that's by hand or machine on paintwork or even gloss plastics, is simply the mechanical (or physical) removal of defects through surface abrasion. The first thing to remember though, is that on a very basic level, all these terms mean the same thing. ![]() Maybe you've heard them described as cutting, refining, restoring, compounding or a number of other names and sub-categories. You could say there are a few different forms of what may be referred to as "polishing'.
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