# lets see your damage..



## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

surely people have made mistakes in the past, on practice panels or even on some1s car when doing an actual detail... any1 got photos of damage!?

say a little bit about what happened.. 

lets see them. :devil:


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## Dream Machines (Mar 13, 2006)

great thread mate, I'd like to see some


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## grant_evans (Mar 2, 2008)

was thinking about this the other day, poeple always talk about the damage that can be done with a machine polisher but ive never actualy heard of anyone on here actually doing any damage


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## Jakedoodles (Jan 16, 2006)

There's some threads knocking about if you do a search. A peugeot iirc, and a porsche.


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## Finerdetails (Apr 30, 2006)

As mentioned, the search facility will reduce these repeat posts - search burn/strike through:

here is one from the strike through search to give an idea what you can find by using the search facility

http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=101915&highlight=strike+through


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## joe_0_1 (Apr 7, 2007)

When i did some practising on my mums corsa, I taped up a section on oxidized paint, big error, took me ages to remove the marks.

Not so much a machine polish error though.

You can just about see the marks, an inch ro two away from the 50/50 area.


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## Beeste (Oct 25, 2005)

Despite the comments encouraging the OP to use the search facility I would like to continue this thread by adding my catastrophe.

I doubt you will get ANY pros admitting to mistakes they have made (certainly none from recent activity and none that would be considered a major error). Why would they? It ain't good for reputations which count for everything in this business. And anyway they have the security of liability insurance to make up for any red faces.

However, for mere mortals and wingnuts like me, who should know better here is the story that made me turn my back on detailing for money for good and to stick with my own motors. Let it be a lesson for anyone else out there who fancies a stab at a mates posh car ;( I don't have photos of the damage as it was just too embarassing at the time but please read on.

Here she is:









Very pretty you would say. In fact an excellent job and a collective DW pat on the back was most welcome.

Here's a another shot of the level of correction achieved.










It was two day detail in all. And I was as well prepared as anytime I had been for the level of work required. I

It was all going fantastically well. At the end of the first day I had washed, and corrected about a half of the car, leaving the second day for the final half and waxing etc and any other bits n pieces to finish off.

Then it all went wrong! I had finished the waxing and buffing and was starting to peel off the 3M tape that had been applied on the first day. Nice and careful - you know, Real slow, folding it back a mm a second if that. Oh so careful. And all was going well until I started removing the tape from the front grille which was covered in tape! OH F*CK ME! It was taking the original paint off - not in sections but in lots of little spots. :wall: No matter what I tried it wasn't working. I tried even slower, wetting the tape, warm water, cold water, slow and easy. But NO FFS it looked like a snow storm.  I was SO embarassed - a beautiful car in every other respect except for a front grille that looks a snow globe.  The owner was gutted to say the least. And I was SO embarassed I gave him the job for free in the end. I went home with my tail tucked in firmly between my legs almost in denial as I posted up my wonderful detail for all to see here on DW. :wall:

The moral of the story is obvious but I will let others state it anyway......
OUCH!

Edit: Forgot to add that the reason you can't see the damage in the first pic is because I had touched it up with a tin of black paint I managed to get from a Halfords. It wasn't a bad match - but still.......


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## Kev F (Feb 23, 2006)

Beeste,

Congrats for doing what most people on here wont. Be honest and open about their mistakes. I am sure there are lots more 'professional enthusiasts' who have had similar if not worse incidents but are not going to mention them.

When I was starting out, I did a friends Ford Probe and that was really bad for swirls, oxidized paint etc....there was one particular patch just behind the drivers door handle and whilst machining that and talking to the owner, I struck through..It really only takes a split second but I learnt my lesson and got the door blown in for him and also, as you did, finished the car and left it looking miles better than it did.

It must have been a gut wrencher when the paint started to lift...I feel you pain...

I hope the friendship continued though and a pat of the back for that awesome detail anyway. Lovely cars those Astons......

Kev


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## AndyC (Oct 25, 2005)

Nothing wrong with admitting one's mistakes - we aren't all perfect.

I went through on the 205 some years ago - top of the A post. This was with my PC and a yellow Meguiars pad and original Menzerna IP. Paint's original AFAIK so it was pure cack-handedness which caused it. I also had a tiny strike through on the bonnet which wasn't original paint with a more aggresive polish 2 days later.

Moral of the story is that a DA will burn through if handled wrongly; it just takes a bit longer than a rotary!

The only paid detail I ****ed up on was a Merc around the driver's door handle. I was using a new pad and I nicked the back of the handle. the rotary jumped and went through to primer along the crease at the bottom of the cut-out around the handle. Nightmare as the owner wasn't present and didn't return for 2 hours. Turned out the car was booked in for paint anyway as the door wasn't quite sitting right so lesson learned but not too painful.

Otherwise, my only burn through moments have been absolutely deliberate and encouraged by those who attended the Dodo training days last year. From memory I think I managed a sub 20 seconds to bare metal :doublesho


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## Neil_S (Oct 26, 2005)

Absolutely agree with Andy, nothing wrong in making a mistake as we make mistakes to learn from them.

I always tape up exposed plastics when using a rotary as I made a momentary mistake when polishing my dads car and a split second of the edge of the rotary hitting the top of his rear bumper burned through.

It was a very small patch and easily fixed, my dad wasn't too mad as he was amazed how good the rest of the car looked!


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## Bigpikle (May 21, 2007)

I could show the lack of clearcoat on one of my scrap panels, but its under 6" of snow right now. 

I spent many weeks using the same panels over and over, with different polish and pad combos and trying wetsanding and polishing etc. Now the main section of the panel is completely speckled and patchy looking and about 5 shades of blue, where the clear has been breached in several places and is extremely thinned in many other patches.

Not a mistake, as the panel was being mullered to help me learn, but it did remind me that regular polishing and a few sets each time is going to eat your clearcoat


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## VIPER (May 30, 2007)

Can't see the point in recommending using the search facility in this instance - the OP is wanting to start a thread where _everyone_ can see the pictures of machine polishing errors (which may then be beneficial to other members in their own practices). If he just uses the search function then only _he_ gets to see the pics.

It's no different to when someone starts a thread like "Show us your black cars" for example. There'd be no point in telling that person to use the search facility to look for archived pictures of black cars, as the object of starting the thread is to collect all the cars of that colour together for everyone to view, and I see no difference with this thread.

Anyway, back on topic...


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## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

lol i wonder if anybody has done a nearly new lambo or something! i would h8 to imagin the feeling you have before telling the client! ouch! major ****ty pants! lol hehe... i cant wait to start machine polishing (on scrap panels) to see how easy it is to **** it up.. just hope i get the hang of it easy enough! i dread the day it happens to me on an actual car!

i think the only way to make up would be charge nothing for the one you did the boo boo on and give them a free one next time aswell as getting the pannel re-sprayed lol! big hole in the pocket!


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## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

lovely work there tho beeste, never the less! just hope ur still friends lol!


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## noop (Jan 5, 2007)

Reflection said:


> i think the only way to make up would be charge nothing for the one you did the boo boo on and give them a free one next time aswell as getting the pannel re-sprayed lol! big hole in the pocket!


Do you think there would be a next time for anyone who damaged a paying customers car? (excluding friends family etc...)


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## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

if you have a gr8 track record i should think so, as everyone makes mistakes at time, no-one is perfect 100% of the time.. the client would be a right **** if they didnt understand its such a touch and go process... 

thats my view anyway..


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## richie.guy (Apr 10, 2006)

Reflection said:


> if you have a gr8 track record i should think so, as everyone makes mistakes at time, no-one is perfect 100% of the time.. the client would be a right **** if they didnt understand its such a touch and go process...
> 
> thats my view anyway..


Not much excuse for a burn through tbh

If in doubt leave it or be very, very gentle.

I sympathise with people who have removed tape only to find that the clearcoat/colour comes away due to a poor paint job.


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## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

richie.guy said:


> Not much excuse for a burn through tbh
> 
> If in doubt leave it or be very, very gentle.
> 
> *I sympathise with people who have removed tape only to find that the clearcoat/colour comes away due to a poor paint job*.


as i havent ever done machine polishing before, i dont understand this bit you and the beeste menchioned before. can some1 explain more on this part of the process? how does the tape removel effect ruining the job so badly? :newbie:


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## CJA Valeting (Dec 7, 2006)

Reflection said:


> as i havent ever done machine polishing before, i dont understand this bit you and the beeste menchioned before. can some1 explain more on this part of the process? how does the tape removel effect ruining the job so badly? :newbie:


Have you ever done any decorating around the home pulled off the tape around the window frame and regardless of how carefull you are the tape it still manages to pull off some of the paint, thus spoiling the finish.

:thumb:


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## noop (Jan 5, 2007)

richie.guy said:


> Not much excuse for a burn through tbh
> 
> If in doubt leave it or be very, very gentle.
> 
> I sympathise with people who have removed tape only to find that the clearcoat/colour comes away due to a poor paint job.


Agreed, If the paint comes off because of this reason it is understandable. The issue is not with the detailer but the bodyshop.


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## Sandro (Mar 16, 2008)

When i was fixing my mates car us to sell i was polishing along the bottom of the bootlid and noticed a bit of smoke, the edge of the pad was just touching the top of the bumper and burnt it a little. Thankfully it wasnt lot. AAAAND the top of the bumper was totally wreck anyway so i was painting it up and sanding it back anyway so i managed to fix it  Thank f0000k!

I also had a problem with tape taking up a bit of paint when removing it. Just a little bit black painted trim that has corrosion underneath the paint. Thankfully that car was my demo car and was of no value at all  the best car to make a mistake on haha


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## Kriminal (Jan 11, 2007)

1st'ly I have a question : how do you 'achieve' (if that's a good choice of words) a strike-through ? 

2nd'ly : I had a couple of stone-chips on the driver's door off my Lexus IS200. The colour was Platinum Ice, so no matter how well you touched-it-in, at certainly angles you would still get a differing colour. Anyway, back to the topic point. I touched in these two spots and left 'em for a few days, as I read an article on another detailing site about doing the following :

Buy some sandpaper (real fine), a pencil with an eraser in the end, some glue, and a hole punch.

Punch out the holes in the sandpaper, and then open the tray underneath to relase the little 'sand-paper-dots'.

Now remove the eraser from the end of the pencil, stick the dots on either end of the eraser with the glue. Leave overnight to set.

You now have a small tool for wet-sanding small stone chips.....<tada>

^^ how good does that sound ?? 

Well, when you begin wet-sanding, ie. soaking the eraser with the stuck on sand-paper dots, all seems to go well, until....

....the freakin' dots start to 'curl' with the wetness, and then instead off having a flat surface (on the paper), you have two edges running along your paintwork!! <eeek> :wall:

I ended up with two lines running along the areas where the dots were, as you were basically blind to anything happening as you were still soaking the dots and eraser in soapy water.

Lesson learned ! :thumb:


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## nicp2007 (Apr 25, 2007)

answer to your first quistion . burn through can happen in a number of ways, you could be using to harse a combo, be pressing on too hard, have the rotterry on to fast a speed.

basically there's a lot of ways, the most commen is just lack of consentration for a min


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## mouthyman (May 1, 2006)

i remember a while back now i did a Tigra which had the usual swirls etc. but it also had a nice big scratch on the side, the owner had asked me previosly to touch it up as best as i could and gave me the factory touchup paint

only after finishing and when it had dried the repair was obviosly a different colour, and being silver it looked dreaful. I was really disheartened as the rest of the car was really nice. I know it wasnt really my fault, but in hinsight i should have tested it somewhere to check beforehand

its sort of put me off doing any repairs and wetsanding on customers cars now


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## nicp2007 (Apr 25, 2007)

sorry no pics but i did make a bad mistake on my own car once.

i was doing a full detail in my vectra gsi to get it ready for a show the next day, when i though it would be cool have a go on a X-board (basically a bendy skate board with shopping cart wheels) which i swiftly fell off and broke my elbow,

after a few hours in hostpital i got back and thought i best finish my car off and get it ready for the show, so i tryed to machine one handed ( i know this must be one of my most stupid momants) and as you can guess i burned through on my rear querter,

i still made it to the show driving 300 miles one handed and having some nice friend and mres to finish the car off when we got there,


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## geert dr (Jul 13, 2007)

I had a "burntrough" on a old Golf ( 1989 ) that i polished for a friend !
Even though it was a freebie job ,i was gutted .
When he came to pick his car up i told him what happened, when i showed him the spot he started laughing and said "don't worry mate ,i sprayed that spot last week with some rattlecanpaint ,there was some rust so i sanded it down to bare metal and sprayed on some white! " :wall::wall::lol:

This is it !










This is the car !


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## Tricky Red (Mar 3, 2007)

Reflection said:


> lol i wonder if anybody has done a nearly new lambo or something! i would h8 to imagin the feeling you have before telling the client! ouch! major ****ty pants! lol hehe... i cant wait to start machine polishing (on scrap panels) to see how easy it is to **** it up.. just hope i get the hang of it easy enough! i dread the day it happens to me on an actual car!
> 
> i think the only way to make up would be charge nothing for the one you did the boo boo on and give them a free one next time aswell as getting the pannel re-sprayed lol! big hole in the pocket!


It's hate by the way not h8. Can't stand text speak on forums. And I noticed a gr8 in there somewhere. Spell check your posts too.... menchioned???

When you can find them in the dictionary you can use it fine by me.

Sorry for the rant.


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## Beeste (Oct 25, 2005)

Tricky Red said:


> It's hate by the way not h8. Can't stand text speak on forums. And I noticed a gr8 in there somewhere. Spell check your posts too.... menchioned???
> 
> When you can find them in the dictionary you can use it fine by me.
> 
> Sorry for the rant.


A fine fellow, on a save the Queen's English crusade. I salute you sir! :thumb:


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## petenaud (Feb 17, 2008)

Text speak should be banned.


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## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

I've had clear coat come off a front bumper of a BMW with masking tape before. I'm always careful on edges etc but this was about 2 inches in from the edge and it just came away whole in the shape of a 50p piece, not my fault and nothing I could do about it but the car was put down to the local Porsche Approved bodyshop that afternoon and back the next day as good as new. The bumper had been re-sprayed before but whether that had anything to do with it i dont know...

I think alot has to be said of how you look after the customer *IF* something goes wrong. This particular customer has been back to us twice since and couldnt have been happier with the service he received


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## Paul-T (Nov 2, 2006)

Only grief I had was masking tape based, on the trim around the rear side windown of a tatty E36 BMW, belonging to a friend of mine. Removing the tape pulled a load of paint away, and while I was mortified my friend wasn't bothered. The car was in such a state the whole day was a waste of time. Valuable lesson learnt though. 

Oh, and I agree about text speak. Characters are free on the internet, the use of text dribble is childish, incomprehensible and un-necessary.


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## 182_Blue (Oct 25, 2005)

post tidied, if i have to tidy again im not going to be happy


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## Brazo (Oct 27, 2005)

Please keep this thread on topic, thank you


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## Neil_S (Oct 26, 2005)

And no text speak, make use of the full facilities which the keyboard offers, this isn't Bebo


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## Kriminal (Jan 11, 2007)

Cool, now where were we ?....oh yeah, I'm surprised to read about so many incidences with masking tape. Don't get me wrong - I'm completely naive to using the stuff, but didn't think (and wouldn't think) that masking tape could cause so many problems.


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## Neil_S (Oct 26, 2005)

On the subject of masking tape I've always disliked that blue 3M stuff, way too sticky. Much prefer standard decorators 3M tape. Not great when it is damp, but cheaper and less sticky.


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## Kriminal (Jan 11, 2007)

Neil_S said:


> On the subject of masking tape I've always disliked that blue 3M stuff, way too sticky. Much prefer standard decorators 3M tape. Not great when it is damp, but cheaper and less sticky.


Is that the kind off beige colour stuff that just rips off easily ?.....if so, that's what I would opt for too, certainly after reading this topic


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## petenaud (Feb 17, 2008)

i will be careful in the future with masking tape after reading this.


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## Brazo (Oct 27, 2005)

Kriminal said:


> Cool, now where were we ?....oh yeah, I'm surprised to read about so many incidences with masking tape. Don't get me wrong - I'm completely naive to using the stuff, but didn't think (and wouldn't think) that masking tape could cause so many problems.


A smart repair guy working on my old clio pulled off the masking tape to reveal it took the clearcoat with it, just as well he was in a position to sort it out!

FWIW I always stick the tape to my clothing first to pick up fluff etc so it is less sticky and before anyone says what if you collect some grit - so what! You know the alternative


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## Reflection (Jan 27, 2009)

standard 3M tape FTW!!!


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## Neil_S (Oct 26, 2005)

Kriminal said:


> Is that the kind off beige colour stuff that just rips off easily ?.....if so, that's what I would opt for too, certainly after reading this topic


Thats the stuff, got 36 rolls off ebay a while back, still have half of it left and thats with what feels like endless DIY work too.


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## S63 (Jan 5, 2007)

182_blue said:


> if i have to tidy again im not going to be happy


I thought for one moment swmbo had posted this.


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## Beeste (Oct 25, 2005)

Useful tip that Brazo. Thanks. I also pulled off half a BMW bonnet badge too with that 3M stuff.  Be careful is all I can say, or use an alternative.


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## Alex L (Oct 25, 2005)

I once dropped a bottle of menz on this car http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=28547

Neil_S, John and I spent a bit of time searching for any damage, luckily for me there was none.


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## Sandro (Mar 16, 2008)

Neil_S said:


> Thats the stuff, got 36 rolls off ebay a while back, still have half of it left and thats with what feels like endless DIY work too.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3M-Scotch-221...14&_trkparms=72:1683|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1307

this stuff?


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## paulmc08 (Feb 3, 2009)

Reflection said:


> surely people have made mistakes in the past, on practice panels or even on some1s car when doing an actual detail... any1 got photos of damage!?
> 
> say a little bit about what happened..
> 
> lets see them. :devil:


yes this would be very good,it wouldnt be to poke fun at people,just to know how and why,it would be helpful for the newbies,maybe


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## paulmc08 (Feb 3, 2009)

in the car garage where i valeted cars,machine polishing ect,i had a white berlingo van, got the paint into decent shape:buffer: but there was one really wide scrape that needed painting,so the boss comes in and says,can you not get that out:wall:so i tell him that any more of the machine and the paint will be off, but he wouldnt have it,so while he stands and watches me go at it again,i put all my weight behind the polisher and took it straight down to the metal,just to prove a point:devil: needless to say he never questioned my work again:lol:


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