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The difference between a hack and a professional is a professional knows when to stop
Back in the summer of 2023, shortly after I joined the Dr. Beasley's team, my long-time friend, Paul Grasso, of Grasso Garage, (a full custom car building business here in Stuart, Florida), asked me if I could help him remove some scratches out of the back window of an all-original 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This is a numbers-matching, 426 Hemi Engine, Pistol Grip, Dana 60 Rear-end Superbird in Vitamin C Orange. Here's a picture after fixing the class and polishing the paint.
When I arrived at the Grasso Garage shop, they rear window was on a fender stand.
After closely inspecting the glass, I told Paul,
The only way to remove the deeper scratches would be to machine sand the entire outside of the window.
He said,
This is the original back window and the owner wants to keep the car 100% original. Besides that, there are ZERO factory OEM replacements. There are reproductions, but no real-deal.
I replied back,
I'm happy to give it my best, but if things go south, I will not be held liable, it's really just a matter of being careful and getting lucky.
Paul discussed the process with the owner and the owner green-flagged us to proceceed. I'll include the link to the full article below, but suffice to say, we we're successful. We machine sanded the glass using a rotary polisher with Mirka Abralon Sanding discs, starting at 180 grit and working our way out to 4000 grit. Then we started polishing using the Dr. Beasley NSP GL Glass Polish.
When we were through, wiping the sweat from my forehead, I said
Dang, we did it! And nothing went wrong. There was ONE tiny scratch that we didn't remove, but at that point, we made the decision to stop and call it good.
Paul said,
The difference between a hack and a professional is a professional knows when to stop
This quote has stuck with me ever since then and I see the wisdom in it. An in-expereinced person may have chased perfection, we chose to get it really good. And this is a scenario, or another way to say it would be, this is a problem in the car detailing world. When people are NEW to detailing, and specifically paint correction, their passion for perfection will drive them to try to remove each and ever single defect out of the paint and this often leads to a whoops!
And by the word whoops, I mean, the detailer buffs a little too hard for a little to long and buff or burn-through the clearcoat. Or in the case of a single stage paint, they buff or burn through the topcoat and expose the primer and in some cases, the underliying body panel.
Here's another quote by yours truly, First the original, then my version.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Here's my car detailing version,
The road to buying some other dude a paint job is paved with good intentions.
If you're new to car detailing, the first skill you need to learn and master is to either,
Know when to stop
or
Know when to say no
The difference between a hack and a professional is a professional knows when to stop
Here's the link to the full article.
1970 Plymouth Superbird Part 2 - Machine Sanding and Polishing Rare Back Window with NSP GL by Mike Phillips
Mike
Back in the summer of 2023, shortly after I joined the Dr. Beasley's team, my long-time friend, Paul Grasso, of Grasso Garage, (a full custom car building business here in Stuart, Florida), asked me if I could help him remove some scratches out of the back window of an all-original 1970 Plymouth Superbird. This is a numbers-matching, 426 Hemi Engine, Pistol Grip, Dana 60 Rear-end Superbird in Vitamin C Orange. Here's a picture after fixing the class and polishing the paint.
When I arrived at the Grasso Garage shop, they rear window was on a fender stand.
After closely inspecting the glass, I told Paul,
The only way to remove the deeper scratches would be to machine sand the entire outside of the window.
He said,
This is the original back window and the owner wants to keep the car 100% original. Besides that, there are ZERO factory OEM replacements. There are reproductions, but no real-deal.
I replied back,
I'm happy to give it my best, but if things go south, I will not be held liable, it's really just a matter of being careful and getting lucky.
Paul discussed the process with the owner and the owner green-flagged us to proceceed. I'll include the link to the full article below, but suffice to say, we we're successful. We machine sanded the glass using a rotary polisher with Mirka Abralon Sanding discs, starting at 180 grit and working our way out to 4000 grit. Then we started polishing using the Dr. Beasley NSP GL Glass Polish.
When we were through, wiping the sweat from my forehead, I said
Dang, we did it! And nothing went wrong. There was ONE tiny scratch that we didn't remove, but at that point, we made the decision to stop and call it good.
Paul said,
The difference between a hack and a professional is a professional knows when to stop
This quote has stuck with me ever since then and I see the wisdom in it. An in-expereinced person may have chased perfection, we chose to get it really good. And this is a scenario, or another way to say it would be, this is a problem in the car detailing world. When people are NEW to detailing, and specifically paint correction, their passion for perfection will drive them to try to remove each and ever single defect out of the paint and this often leads to a whoops!
And by the word whoops, I mean, the detailer buffs a little too hard for a little to long and buff or burn-through the clearcoat. Or in the case of a single stage paint, they buff or burn through the topcoat and expose the primer and in some cases, the underliying body panel.
Here's another quote by yours truly, First the original, then my version.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Here's my car detailing version,
The road to buying some other dude a paint job is paved with good intentions.
If you're new to car detailing, the first skill you need to learn and master is to either,
Know when to stop
or
Know when to say no
The difference between a hack and a professional is a professional knows when to stop
Here's the link to the full article.
1970 Plymouth Superbird Part 2 - Machine Sanding and Polishing Rare Back Window with NSP GL by Mike Phillips
Mike
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