Modern vehicle paint is made up of 3 layers: primer, base coat (the actual colour) and clearcoat. Clearcoat is the layer that protects your paint, and bears all the grunt of environmental fallout and contact from rain, sun, snow, and impact. If the clearcoat is subjected to sharp edges from grit, or even your nail, it can result in a very fine portion of clearcoat being removed. The reason we see these defects is because light cannot reflect evenly from the surface anymore, and reflects back and forth within the ‘gulley’ of these fine scratches to illuminate the defects.

 

There are two ways to deal with this. One way is to use chemical ‘filler oils’ which fill in the defects to make it look like everything has disappeared, and the other way is to buff the clearcoat with specially formulated compounds and polishes.

 

Make It Shine does not use filler oils to hide defects. After a few weeks, these oils will wash away, and your paint will look the same as it did before. This truly is a waste of your valuable time, and hard earned money. We at Make It Shine use specially formulated machined abrasives. You may be thinking “abrasives sound bad”, but do not worry. This is where the skill and experience will separate detailers in the quality of their work, and this is where we shine!

 

 

The rule of thumb in doing this process is to use the least abrasive method first and work your way up until the desired results are achieved. To monitor the thickness of clearcoat before and after, a special device called a Paint Thickness Gauge is used to measure the thickness of clearcoat (in microns). You will notice on some details in our Portfolio section that a few “after” pictures say “too dangerous to remove” or “too deep to remove.” The readings from the Paint Thickness Gauge tell us how much “play” (or margin) we have while doing our defect removal. If the readings around the scratches are too low, we leave the area alone because it is in the best interest of the paint’s longevity. We will however attend to the area with additional care when applying the final protection layer (wax or synthetic sealant). Refer to the diagram below for an illustration of how defects are removed and why sometimes it is better to leave certain things alone.

 

 

 

After compounding and polishing, your clearcoat will be restored to look like this:

 

*Make note of the very small portion of clearcoat that has been removed. There is still a very large and healthy amount remaining for future paint correction. The area around the scratch was leveled down to the same thickness of where the scratch was. This is why if a scratch is too deep (through the base coat for example), it is best to leave it alone unless repainted.