# KDS Detailing and Incredible Detail - Wet Sanding Tution Detail (on My E36 coupe)



## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

Despite obviously being confident in all aspects of detailing (or else it wouldn't be paying the bills) wet sanding isn't something I've really needed to do much in the past. I've never seen the need to wet sand scratches out of paintwork and all scratches I've delt with in the past, no matter how deep have all be polished out or rounded off.

Having seen this BMW E92 M3 Ultimate Wetsand by KDS some time ago I was very impressed (as were most people and detailers I'm sure ) and was keen to learn how to do it. I could have spent days or weeks on end practicing myself doing this but I thought the best way to learn would be with one to one tution from someone who clearly is very good at it.

I contacted Kelly not long after the above thread was put up regarding tuition and was told that due to a lot of requests he planned to do this in the future. So after seing Russ' post on here regarding his training I was straight on the phone to Kelly and booked 4 days of wet sanding training.

The plan was to spend a day learning the basics and practicing on various scrap panels, then spend the rest of the time wet sanding my own car.

The idea of this write up is not to give you a step by step guide on how to wet sand. It is more of a review of the training and to show the amazing results than can be achieved with wet sanding.

The first day was spent tried out all various types of wet sanding and discussing what each type would be used for. The good things about KDS having a paintshop is that Kelly was able to spray various test panels,

One test panel was divided a test panel up like this :










The first section was colour only, the second section was colour and one layer of clear and the third section was colour with 2 layers of clear - which showed how the paint system on most modern cars are made up. Due to the way it was taped up you could view the thickness of the paint - something that is obvioulsy not visible on cars.

The second test panel was divided up in to multiple section with loads of different poor finishes. The best looking section was painted by Cons (one of Kellys employees) who had never painted before. The idea of getting Cons to paint it was that the finish would be quite poor but this never worked :lol:.

I knew that wet sanding could be used to correct a poor paint finish from the gun but the finish on a few of the sections look so bad that I was impressed at how well the panels came up. We not only removed orange peel but also sorted out dry finishes and removed pieces of dirt and dust from the paint.

I didn't take too many pictures on this day so I don't have exact before and after pictures of each panels. Here's a few pictures of the panels and processes carried out.

Orange Peel










Wet sanding via DA










Finish after wet sanding via DA (obvioulsy before being polished back up). As you can see still loads of orange peel left in.










Wet sanding by hand



















50/50 shot with orange peel removed










Area hand sanded after polishing










We also discussed dry sanding by hand and why wet sanding was much better and safer. The water allows the removed clear coat to flood away from the area when wet sanding, however when dry sanding the discs can get clogged up very quickily and this can create deep pig tail which require much more paint removal when polishing out the sanding marks.

Wet sanding by machine with the mirka is the quickest way to do it and is ideal for bodyshops when they want to knock back some of the orange peel quickly. They usually don't need to remove orange peel completely as most cars have it to some extent anyway so they try and match this - although as I'm sure most people will be aware of they're not always the best at this. The soft backing of the pads means that they conform to the contours of the paintwork and don't knock the heads of the orange peel of in the same way sanding by hand or by machine using pads that aren't soft backed - this does however mean that it is difficult for the machine to follow the lines of the panels.

Really the best way to get a perfectly flat finish is to either sand the panel by hand with a block, or sanding it by hand without a block. Done correctly and safely, removing the bare minimum of paint that needs be makes this a very time consuming process. Maybe it could be done in a few days but this is going to be removing loads more paint than need be.

Day 2 consisted of a short while in the morning discussing and experimenting removing scratches by wet sanding. Now part of the reason I've never done this before is because, it can change the paint finish around the scratch by making it flatter than the rest of the panel (removing the orange peel on it).

Various deep scratches were put on the test panel and they were removed different ways. Wet sanding by hand left a flatter finish in the area around the scratch - wet sanding by machine not so much so but still made difference to the appearance. Removing the scratches with the edge of pad of rounding off the edges of a scratch was agreed to be the best option as this prevented the finish on a section of the paintwork being different to the surrounding areas.

Now as most people will know swirl marks and scratches in paintwork are cut in the laquer cause by a variety of things. The reason we can see them is because these minute cuts have sharp edges meaning the light catches them and make them look white. Swirl marks and scratches are eliminated by polishing the surrounding clear coat to level it and remove scratches. Or if the scratch is too deep it's apperance can be reduce greatly by rounding off the sharp edges of the scratch.

On the test panel it was also noted that wet sanding scratches meant that the paintwork on both sides of the scratch was levelled down equally and if the scratch was quite deep and not removed by the wet sanding process it meant that the both sides of the scratch were levelled down equally and the sharp edges were still apparent - meaning the scratch was still quite noticeable. Even more paint had to be removed to round the edges of the scratch off to reduce it's appearance (and remove the sanding marks). By just polishing the scratch the edges of the scratch were rounded off more easily, made it less visible and removing less paint. So I intend to stick to my normal way of polishing out scratches and rounding off the edge of them if they're too deep to polish out completely.

We then moved on to wet sanding my own car. Here's the before pictures showing what the finish on the paintwork was like :


















































































As you can see. Not very good! Being a 16 year old car it had seen a few bits of paintwork which didn't have the best finish. It also had the standard orange peel on the original panels.

Additionally there was a couple of areas like this










This is an area where the paintwork has sunk. Despite looking terrible this, and another area similar was removed by wet sanding and this only removed 2 microns of paint.

So on to the wet sanding on my car.

The car was wet sanded with 1500 grit wet and dry paper then followed by 2000,2500,3000 & 4000.










I wet sanded most car and Cons wet sanded the bonnet. There wasn't going to be enough time to completely sand the whole car and quite a few areas wouldn't have benifited from it as they weren't as bad.



















Getting there



















After each few passes the panel was dried and the finish was checked to see how much orange peel was removed. I was shown how to check properly if the orange peel is removed completely and had previoulsy read that the panel needs to be polish back up to check properly. The above pictures are after 1500.

Here's the car after 4000 grit.





































As you can see the finish after 4000 is much shinier. The key here and the most difficult part is to sand for long enough with each grade of paper to remove the sanding marks from the previous grade. Again I was shown exactly how to check that I'd sanded enough with each grit of paper and didn't sand too much with it thus removing too much paint.

It would be possible to sand the whole car in 1500 then polish it back up from there but this would result in either it taking a long time to polish out all of the sanding marks or just reaching for a much more aggressive compound to remove them - which would then remove way more paint than need be. Most of the sanding marks were removed very easily with one hit of Menzerna Intensive Polish on a green chemical guys polish pad. It's much better to spend more time sanding the car with finer grades of sand paper rather than using a very aggressive compound to remove the deeper sanding marks.










As I was wet sanding Kelly was polishing out the sanding marks and then obviously I started polishing them out too.





































On all of the panels wet sanded the orange peel was removed from the clear coat completely. As you can see it made a massive difference to the paintwork and overall look of the car. Something that obvioulsy machine polishing alone can't do.














































Sunken paint removed from sunroof




























Luckily we manged to finish the car on the Saturday before it was dark so I manged to get some pictures of the car outside in direct sunlight. It looked fantastic in the unit but once outside the finish was amazing. Please excuse all of the final pictures - I really was delighted and want to show off how good it looked.

These are my winter wheels btw and I think it will look much better once I've got my BBS sport wheels on.










As you can see, perfect reflection as no orange peel in sight 



















The paintwork looked like glass


































































































































































































































Even now when I look at the car on a dull day it still looks so much better than it did before. The paintwork just looks so much deeper and glossier.

Overall a thoroughly enjoyable 4 days where I learned at lot more than expected to and also got the added benifit of my car now looking better than I could have imagined.

So thanks to Kelly for the great training and hopefully you have plently more people on your course who to learn wet sanding the proper way :thumb:

Thanks for reading

Robert

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Also have a look at our website for details on the services we provide - www.incredibledetail.co.uk


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## Trip tdi (Sep 3, 2008)

Very impressive, thank you for posting up, lovely write-up and serious skill :thumb:


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

Great post Rob. Welcome to the world of peel free car ownership!!


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2012)

OMG - the finish looks amazing! The paint truly looks like it's still wet in those pictures. The reflections are crystal sharp.


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## razorak (Jan 9, 2012)

very good work.

and thank you for sharing


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## Chicane (Mar 31, 2011)

excellent job you did there, love those sunset shots :thumb:


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## TUBS (May 9, 2006)

Wow, great results !


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## athol (Oct 3, 2009)

Stunning work there, car looks amazing !


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## Beau Technique (Jun 21, 2010)

Interesting and good results at the end. Seem's that wetsanding will be the 2012 buzz.


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## toni (Oct 30, 2005)

Superb finish there :thumb:


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## Prism Detailing (Jun 8, 2006)

Nice write up, and Kelly's skills in wetsanding are legendry....cant be taught off anyone better IMO.

So when you popping round to show off your car then !?! lol


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## Kelly @ KDS (Aug 4, 2008)

quick reply , as i will get back to this thread later when i have more time to read it fully :thumb:

A pic that Rob i guess would not of known we took










and










car looked great after wet sanding , completed many full wet sands on many vehicles , this is the first time on a red car , came out stunning and gave it so much more depth and gloss the same as on my car :thumb:

glad your happy rob

kelly

www.kdsdetailing.co.uk


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## Prism Detailing (Jun 8, 2006)

Kelly @ KDS said:


> car looked great after wet sanding , completed many full wet sands on many vehicles , this is the first time on a red car , came out stunning and gave it so much more depth and gloss the same as on my car :thumb:


I was thinking this was the first red one you have posted (or rob has)


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## dubber31 (Jan 8, 2006)

Fantastic work!!! :thumb:


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## Matt_Nic (Apr 15, 2011)

Very good thread, thank you for it as it's something I want to learn myself. 

Either with some scrap panels or my dad's old car he may retire soon. 

On a related note - would stone chip repair be good to go hand in hand with wet sanding?


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## DMH-01 (Mar 29, 2011)

Great work there mate.


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## ianFRST (Sep 19, 2006)

awesome 

if only i had the spare cash to get some tuition :lol:


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## andrewone (May 11, 2011)

Great work absolutley stunning!!! Hope you dont mind me asking and tell me to mind my own business if you do, but how much would a course like this set you back??? 
Regards
Andrew


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## Defined Reflections (Jun 4, 2009)

Awesome results! i think kelly will be busy for some time doing these courses :thumb:


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## Sander (Apr 1, 2011)

Killer skill and awesome results


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## bigslippy (Sep 19, 2010)

Stunning finish and a great write up , thanks for sharing


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## Simply Clean (Aug 20, 2011)

Top work :thumb:


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## fastbreak79 (Feb 23, 2012)

That's a mirror shine. :thumb:


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## Mad Ad (Feb 7, 2011)

Awesome the sunset pic's are stunning giving it such a dept of gloss.


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## abbacus (Mar 24, 2011)

AMAZING! :argie::argie::argie:

This is the money shot for me:










:thumb:


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## Matt_Nic (Apr 15, 2011)

I'd like to say it looks like fresh paint. 

But it looks vastly better.


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## fizzle86 (Apr 1, 2010)

Stunning work lads :thumb:

With reference to 4000 grit sandpaper where is the best place to buy?


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## Kelly @ KDS (Aug 4, 2008)

I will start to sort through the training days pictures and then post some of them showing the process in more detail :thumb:

got over 3000 pics from different training days to go through now :doublesho

I even have many pics of Rob in action too 

kelly

www.kdsdetailing.co.uk


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## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

Thanks for the comments everyone. It's usually other people I'm impressing by detailing their cars so it's nice to impress myself for a change. Was never happy with the finish but looks near perfect now.



Matt_Nic said:


> On a related note - would stone chip repair be good to go hand in hand with wet sanding?


Not sure what you mean by this? Of course you can wet sand stone chips when you touch them up but I wouldn't go and wet sand a whole bonnet just because of a few stone chips. Best to do it in isolation.



andrewone said:


> Great work absolutley stunning!!! Hope you dont mind me asking and tell me to mind my own business if you do, but how much would a course like this set you back???
> Regards
> Andrew


Thanks. It's not really the normal etiquette to post prices in the studio. Probably best email Kelly and ask (even if it is just to be curious).



Prism Detailing said:


> Nice write up, and Kelly's skills in wetsanding are legendry....cant be taught off anyone better IMO.
> 
> So when you popping round to show off your car then !?! lol


Flat out just now so and not got time to polish up my bss wheels etc but feel free to pop round and and see it (best message me first incase working away).



Kelly @ KDS said:


> I will start to sort through the training days pictures and then post some of them showing the process in more detail :thumb:
> 
> got over 3000 pics from different training days to go through now :doublesho
> 
> ...


Thanks Kelly. There's a reason I don't post many pictures of myself!


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## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

fizzle86 said:


> Stunning work lads :thumb:
> 
> With reference to 4000 grit sandpaper where is the best place to buy?


Cheers. Probaby local motor factors (brown brothers or the like).


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