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I'm finding it hard to believe that that jaw-dropping shine can be brought back with my bare hands (A little encouragement here would be cool).




Hopefully... 'by hand' means using a power polisher and not literally 'by hand'. and remember that ANY rough surface can be made to shine and have a high level of gloss IF it is polished enough. That is why the final wet sand... final rubbing compound... final polishing and waxing will make the difference between a 20 footer... a 10 footer... and a 2 footer...

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I'm at a crossroads where things could easily turn ugly from here, as I just wetsanded for my first time... EVER. Using 600 grit I knocked down the brush strokes and achieved a smooth surface fairly easily, sanding through in a couple spots but I'm getting the hang of it.

One thing that concerns me has been these small, shiny spots. Previous layer??? Is the remedy a thicker third coat?





Have you ever gone to a skating rink and watched a Zamboni machine prepare the ice ? In a way that is a good way to envision what you are trying to accomplish. The Zamboni goes over the ice and scrapes away the roughened top layer of the ice and then lays down a fresh coat of water over the freshly scraped surface ( which fills in any scratches below the top layer and creates a new top layer ( which will freeze and provide a smooth and shiny top surface ).

If there are shiny patches... it may mean that that is a lower layer that did not feather in with the wetsanding of a higher layer. Sometimes that happens and all you can hope for is that your next coat will level the two layers to one uniform layer. You could provide that shiny spot with some additional wet sanding... BUT it may be lowering that layer so that the next coat of paint won't be able to top it up enough to bring it equal to the majority of the paint layers.

You must resist the urge to go too thick at this point. It will be far better in the overall process to lay down two thin layers as per the recipe.

Impatience and a rush to speed up the process and thick layers usually lead to the orange peel effect. So just keep working like a Zamboni and you will end up with the smoothest surface

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