Compounds for every job
Purpose of Compounds & Polishes
Polish away swirls and scratches with our swirl removers, car polishes, compounds, and scratch removers. Use our polishes to level swirl marks and restore a smooth, glossy finish. Reduce and remove scratches with a process involving wet sanding often referred to as "color sanding". Our Synthetic and grit based compounds will do the trick. With several levels of grit, you can take on nearly any compounding job with ease.
Think of your vehicle’s clear coat as its outermost layer of skin. If you hit it with something or rub something rough on it, it will scratch. These tiny scratches and swirls are like scars on your paint. They detract from the beauty of your vehicle and dull the overall shine. However, unlike many scars, you can fix most of the minor scratches and swirls on your paint with a premium polish or swirl remover.
Polish, Compound, Wax or Buff? These terms get used a lot during discussions about car detailing. Often, they are used interchangeably without regard to their real meaning. However, they all have very distinct meanings and knowing how they differ can make a world of difference.
Paint Correction
Picture the painted surface of your car as a smooth, mirror like plane. Over time, dust, dirt, and other contaminants build up on that smooth surface. Things like orange peel in the clear coat only help to attract contaminants. Unfortunately, the process of washing this dirt and dust away causes the fine particles to act like sandpaper, scratching and digging grooves into the once smooth clear coat surface. As these fine scratches build up, the surface becomes dull and hazed. Paint correction is the use of specialized machines and polishing agents to slowly remove microscopic layers of clear coat to once again make the surface smooth and mirror like.
Generally, compounding is part of the paint correction process. We always follow the rule of starting with the least aggressive approach first and moving to stronger and stronger abrasives as necessary. As the process of paint correction is actually removing microscopic layers of clear coat, there is a finite amount (or depth) of scratching that can be corrected. The idea is to remove as little clear coat as possible while restoring the finish. Not all defects can be restored with paint correction.
A buffing or polishing machine, is a handheld machine with a motorized spinning head. Foam or fiber pads are placed on the head and used to spread wax or polishing agents onto the painted surface. Though it is often applied with a buffing or polishing machine, it is simply a coating which fills in the scratches – making them harder to see. Over time the wax is worn and washed away, once again, revealing the underlying scratches. In terms of paint correction, wax is purely cosmetic. It will make your car look good for a short time, but does nothing to remove the underlying scratches.
Removing the scratches requires the slow removal of microscopic layers of clear coat to, once again, level out the surface. Compounding agents or leveling agents are specifically formulated liquids that, when added to the rotating pad of a buffing or polishing machine, act as extremely fine grit sandpaper to slowly shave down the clear coat surface. Once the compounding agents have done the heavy work, a polish is then used to remove any final haze and add to the depth and clarity of the finished surface. Think of polish as an even finer grit sandpaper that is used to fine tune the newly leveled surface, revealing a beautiful, highly polished surface.
