Polish Car - Methods for Polishing Scratches

Mark Boudreau: Hi! My name is Mark Boudreau from Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center and today, I am showing you how to polish by hands and with the machine buffer scuffs and scratches out of your vehicle's finish. Right now, I am going to show the difference between polishing compound and rubbing compound; why it is important and the idea of least aggressive methods first.

So our materials that we'll be using to polish our cars, we have something called polish here. Now, this removes very light scratches and we will remove scratches left by rubbing compound. This can be the final step in our repair process before the application of wax. We have something a little bit more aggressive here called rubbing compound. This will remove light to medium scratches. It will sometimes leave slight swirl marks around the area of the repair, which then must be removed by the polish. Now, least aggressive method first; we want to do as little harm as possible; a bit like the physician's creed. So, anytime we have a scuff or a scratch, we start with the least aggressive method. So we are going to remove least amount of material off the top of the finish. Anytime we polish or use rubbing compound on the car, we are actually polishing off a small bit of the top layer of the vehicle's finish, a bit like you might do when you are using an exfoliating soap on your face. So, we start with a clean rag and we are going to remove this scuff mark off of the trunk of this car. Clean rag and polishing compound, shake it up, apply little bit of the polishing compound to the rag. Now, we are ready to remove the scuff mark and the light scratches from our car; that's what we are going to do next.