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Polish Car - Remove Scratches with a Machine Buffer

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Mark Boudreau: Hi, I am Mark Boudreau from Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center. Today, I am showing you how to polish scratches and scuff marks out of your car by hand and with a machine buffer. Right now, I am going to show you how to polish light to medium scratches out of a car with a machine buffer. One machine buffer, I am going to start with the wool pad, these are Velcro, which are pretty neat, they just push on like so. Now, machine buffers can throw a lot of splatter, so you always need to wear safety goggles. Now, we have two sets of scratches we are going to be working with and on the deck lid of this BMW, two light scratches that we were not able to remove with hand polishing here and a set of scratches right over here that are also going to require machine buffing. So, a little bit about technique, we are starting with the wool pad which will polish out light scratches and we are going to use a little bit of rubbing compound.

So, we are going to apply rubbing compound, about a tablespoon kind of in a Z pattern over the affected area, we are going to do one at a time; always shake the compound first. This is an electric buffer, so we take the cord; wrap it around our arms to make sure that we do not get it caught in the buffer while it's spinning. We have got a clean wool pad; we are going to take the pad; we are not going to turn the buffer on at this point; we are just going to make sure we spread the compound evenly and reduce our amount of splatter. First thing we are going to do is start with medium pressure at about 1400 to 2000 rpm if you have got a machine buffer that is capable of setting that speed. Alright, let's begin. Now, you want to move back and forth over the affected area, starting with medium pressure and then lightening up as the compound starts to dry, letting the buffer doing the work for you, keep the buffer as close to parallel with the surface as you can. Now, let's take a look. That looks pretty great. You can still see two slight remnants of the scratches there. Let's try a little bit more compound in our Z pattern and see if we can get those out. Here we go; I am starting with medium pressure and moving to light as the compound dries and that looks pretty great. Now, we do have some swirl marks left over; we are going to need to remove those with polish and a special foam pad. Now, we have removed the scratches over here in the middle that were not removed from our hand polishing, we still need to remove the swirl marks that were left by the machine buffing with the wool pad and compound, we will get to those in a minute. We still have some scratches over here that we need to buff out with the wool pad and the compound. So, we are going to take care of those. Again, shake up our compound, Z pattern, apply the pad to the compound, rub it in a little bit and then buff. It looks great. Again, we've got some swirl marks that we are going to need to remove from our car. That is what we are going to do next with polish and a foam pad.

Expert: Mark Boudreau

Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center

P: (703) 671-2402

When you step into Spectrum Auto Painting & Collision Center, you walk into an award-winning body shop that will immediately surpass your expectations. A clean reception area; greeted with a hello; comfortable seating; original art.The philosophy of the staff at Spectrum is "We are here to provide service. We just happen to fix cars." Mark Boudreau, who started Spectrum in 1993, says that when people More »