Slippery when wet

The Chevelle has the smoothest paint I can put on a car, but as smooth as it is, it isn’t a High Performance Finish.

These three photos show how you take a great finish to an awesome finish, a High Performance Finish. You do it by sanding the paint with ultra-fine sandpaper while the surface is wet. The process goes by a couple of different names. Some call it wet sanding, others call it color sanding, but both mean you are sanding and smoothing the clear coat to make the deepest, richest, paint finish possible.

Paint achieves its gloss by reflecting light. The more the light bounces back directly to your eye, the deeper and richer the shine. Imperfection in the paint, including those you can’t see, scatter the light and muddle the shine. Sanding removes these imperfections, reducing the amount of scatter from the reflecting light.

The paint is sanded while wet because the water acts as a lubricant, preventing the sandpaper from removing too much paint. Sanding through the clear coat would be … bad. The second reason for sanding while the car is wet is the water washes away the sanding dust, making  it far easier to see if the imperfections are removed.

Now I know what you are thinking … how can you see the imperfections while you are sanding when you said you couldn’t see them before. Believe it or not, the sanding process reveals the imperfections so you can see them, just like blocking the car revealed any dents in the car, including those you couldn’t see before. When you can no longer see the imperfections you know the car has a mirror like finish.

A High Performance Finish.