Lake Country Manufacturing

Introducing Lake Country’s New MarineLine Buffing Pads

Web Team — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:54:15 +0000

Experience Superior Marine Detailing with Our Specialized Range

At Lake Country, we’re excited to unveil our all-new MarineLine—a comprehensive collection of buffing pads specifically engineered for marine detailing professionals and boating enthusiasts. Drawing on our decades of experience in crafting high-quality pads, the MarineLine is designed to meet the unique challenges of gel coat and GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic) surfaces.

Why Choose MarineLine Buffing Pads?

Marine-Specific Design: Each pad is tailored for gel coats and GRP surfaces, ensuring optimal performance in marine environments.
Advanced Technology: Features like CCS (Collapsed Cell Structure) technology reduce heat buildup and improve polish efficiency.
Versatility: A wide range of pad types and sizes to tackle everything from heavy oxidation to fine polishing, even in hard-to-reach areas.
Superior Materials: Constructed with premium foam and wool blends for durability and consistent result

Andy Cool talks you through the range

Foam Buffing Pads

Our foam pads are perfect for correcting defects and achieving a high-gloss finish on your vessel’s surfaces.

Correcting Foam Pads Ideal for removing moderate to severe defects, oxidation, and scratches.

Sizes: 6.5″, 5.5″, and 3.5″ (the smaller size is perfect for hard-to-reach areas).
Features:
- Fine-Pore, Rigid Structure: Delivers effective surface correction.
- Flexible Interface: Conforms to contours for even polishing.
- Hook & Loop Backing with Center Hole: Ensures optimal heat management during polishing.

Correcting Foam Pads with CCS Technology

Enhanced with CCS technology for extended work time and minimized heat buildup.

Sizes: 6.5″, 5.5″, and 3.5″.
Benefits:
- CCS Pockets: Reduce polish absorption, allowing gradual release and increased efficiency.
- Optimized for Gel Coats: Provides superior defect removal on marine surfaces.

Polishing Blue Foam Pads

Engineered for light defect removal and final finishing to achieve a flawless, high-gloss shine.

Sizes: 6.5″, 5.5″, and 3.5″.
Features:
- Soft, Fine-Pore Foam: Ideal for refining surfaces after correction.
- Flexible Interface: Ensures even polishing across contours.
- Heat Management: Center hole and hook & loop backing for efficient heat dissipation.

Polishing Foam Pads with CCS Technology

Combines soft foam with CCS technology for extended polish work time and reduced heat buildup.

Sizes: 6.5″, 5.5″, and 3.5″.
Benefits:
- Consistent Product Distribution: Provides a flawless finish.
- Ideal for Gel Coat and GRP Surfaces: Ensures professional-grade results.

Wool Buffing Pads

Our wool pads offer aggressive cutting action for heavy correction tasks, such as removing severe oxidation and defects.

Wool Cutting Pads

Designed for fast and efficient defect removal.

Sizes: 7.5″, 6.5″, 6″ flat, and 3″ (including twin packs and an 8″ double-sided pad for extended use).
Features:
- 100% Twisted Wool: Delivers powerful cutting performance.
- Foam Interface: Enhances flexibility on uneven surfaces.
- Recessed Backing and Rounded Edges: Provide added protection to delicate surfaces.
- Quick Hook & Loop Attachment: Allows easy and versatile use.
- Heat Dissipation: Large surface area and center hole ensure excellent heat management.

Medium Cut Wool Pads

Balance cutting power with finishing ability for moderate oxidation and defect removal.

Sizes: 7.5″, 6.5″, 6″ flat, and 3″ (including twin packs).
Features:
- Blend of Natural and Synthetic Fibers: Offers efficient cutting while leaving a polished finish.
- Rounded Edges: Protect surfaces during polishing.
- Flat Design (on select models): Maximizes surface contact for fast, even results.

Micro Wool Pads with Interface

Perfect for precision work on contoured surfaces and hard-to-reach areas.

Sizes: 6.25″, 5.25″, and 3.25″.
Features:
- 100% Twisted Micro Wool Fibers: Provide efficient cutting power for gel coat correction.
- Foam Interface: Offers enhanced flexibility on uneven surfaces.
- Heat Management: Center hole ensures excellent heat dissipation.
- Ideal for Defect Removal and Oxidation Correction: Designed specifically for marine detailing.

Key Benefits of MarineLine Buffing Pads

Efficient Correction: Remove oxidation, scratches, and defects with ease.
Optimized Performance: Advanced features like CCS technology enhance work time and reduce heat buildup.
Professional Results: Achieve a flawless finish that protects and enhances your vessel’s appearance.
User-Friendly: Designed for both professionals and DIY enthusiasts, with easy attachment systems and sizes suited for all polishing machines.

Upgrade Your Marine Detailing Today

Experience the difference that specialized tools can make in your marine maintenance routine. With Lake Country MFG Inc.’s MarineLine buffing pads, you have the power to restore and maintain your vessel’s beauty and protect your investment.

Visit our MarineLine product page to learn more and find a distributor near you.

Why Would I Need an HDO Pad?

Web Team — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 14:30:36 +0000

Written for the IDA Detail Dialogue, Published December 2022

In detailing, we naturally obsess over tiny details – hence the name, I suppose. A smudge, fingerprint, speck, or stain can and will spoil a detailer’s day since honing in on perfection is what drives us to achieve those ever-elusive ‘highest quality results.’ In our quest for reaching detailing nirvana, small points of difference become intensely magnified.

Machine polishing pads seem like simple products… It looks like you take an engineered foam – manufactured with various physical properties and characteristics – slice it into sheets, attach a loop backing, cut everything into round discs and there you have it. The thing is, there are a ridiculous number of variables in that process that all add points of difference, however small, to the end product.

Let’s compare Lake Country Manufacturing’s SDO and HDO pad ranges. Despite using the exact same foams for cutting and polishing, the design and construction of the HDO pad is intended for detailers with higher demands, working faster and harder, so they have a higher performance envelope than their more basic SDO brethren.

How and why can this be?

Good question. A lot comes down to the dense sandwich layer, sitting beneath the main cutting/polishing foam, which itself is thinner than on the SDO.

Why?

Larger-throw orbital polishers have become popular thanks to their extra cutting prowess (and associated efficiency gains). Larger throw = more movement = more work done. But foams are squishy to at least some degree, and we identified that traditional single-layer foam pads can flex internally under all that aggressive to-ing and fro-ing, with the friction at the pad face acting as a kind of brake. If the foam absorbs some of the action, the polisher is trying to provide 15 or 21mm orbital movements, but the cutting/polishing face could be doing 11 or 15mm movements instead. And less movement = less work done.

Thanks to the very firm interface layer and the thinner ‘active’ foam, HDO pads minimize this effect. On long-throw orbital polishers, they cut and polish noticeably more effective than traditional pads as a direct result.

Coming back full circle – this is how what may seem like a minor point of difference can make a large difference overall. In the case of HDO pads, that could require shorter or fewer passes to achieve your correction goals, saving time, increasing efficiency, and perhaps ultimately helping to make more money.

The firm backing is just one point of difference, though. I’ve received so much feedback praising Lake Country pads for their durability, and that’s not happened by accident; it’s about the quality of the foam materials, the loop, the adhesives and so on. There can be a surprising difference between two very similar looking / feeling foams or fibers. Trust me, I’ve tested hundreds.

Within our HDO line, we also have a couple of microfiber options, differentiated from the standard versions by a center hole and tapered edge. That’s right – we cut out a center hole and bevel the edge of the pad, but otherwise, our HDO microfiber pads are the same materials as the standard ones…see a pattern?

Again, these small points of difference earmark the pads for Heavy Duty Orbital work using a larger-throw orbital polisher. The center hole promotes better pad cooling, which is necessary since there’s more movement/work going on and hence a greater potential to heat build-up. The tapered edge not only allows for better access in tighter areas but also makes a big difference when you start using more advanced pad-tilting techniques, which offer cut and efficiency gains (plus improved cooling, but that’s for another article). The extra material tapering out beneath the backing plate edge means you’ll maintain optimal contact between the fibers and paint surface if you tilt to a slight angle (like Kelly Harris and I do).

Conclusion

Let’s return to the titular question of this article, which I’ve actually been answering all along. You’d need an HDO pad because you care about efficiency; because you’re interested in getting great results without so much effort; because you want to maximize the potential of your long-throw orbital polisher, and you want to do it with durable, reliable pads that have been designed from the ground up to withstand those demands, time and time again.

HDO pads cover the full spectrum of modern detailer’s needs – from the heavy cutting microfiber to the delicate black finishing foam – and are available in a range of sizes from 3” to 6”. You can also opt for our CCS technology on the foam variants for an extra ‘point of difference’ (I’ll summarize – they hold more compound and allow longer working times – I’ll do a full blog on this shortly).

Please contact me if you have any questions about this article or Lake Country products!

Until next time,

Jay @ LC

IG: /jaybroomdetailing 
FB: /jay.broom.detailing
FB group: Detailing with Lake Country

The Most Important Thing To Polish?

Web Team — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:30:30 +0000

Polishing glass ranks as one of the most overlooked detailing skills and services. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing to have pure transparent glass, it’s incredibly important–literally a matter of life and death–to see the road ahead properly. With the low sun, rain, snow and grime of winter upon us (sorry Southern hemisphere), I think now is a great time to talk about how and why machine polishing glass is so important.

Machine polishing glass to clean it

Cleaning glass with a liquid cleaner typically removes surface dirt, but do you notice if you then wipe over the ‘clean’ glass with a damp cloth, you can still see streaky impressions left behind? These leftover stains are fallout, acid rain, and chemical residues on the surface—highly resistant to most glass cleaner sprays, and a stained surface will also tend to get dirtier and more stained more quickly. It’s much easier to maintain a clean surface than having to keep restoring it. Fortunately, one of the easiest ways to fully remove glass staining is by simple machine polishing.

In our workshop we keep old microfiber pads for this purpose, helping to extend their useful life. Take your orbital polisher and pad, apply a medium cutting compound, and polish the glass in sections. I normally divide a windshield into quarters, and for my convenience I tend to put individual squirts of compound on the glass in those sections before I get started – it just saves me time as I don’t have to keep stop-starting.

Don’t be afraid to apply some pressure – you will clean the glass faster, and it won’t cause any damage. It also won’t do anything at all to remove any surface scratches from the glass. All you’re doing is cleaning it ultra-efficiently, and those streaky stains will be gone in no time!

Machine polishing glass to restore it

A beautifully detailed paint job will be thoroughly let down by a scratched windshield. While the paint pops, under many light conditions, the arcing scratches caused by gritty wiper blades (don’t forget to clean/replace these afterward) become an even bigger distraction – not to mention a potential safety issue in the worst cases, as they can increase glare.

Machine polishing glass with a microfiber pad will not remove these scratches. However, with a Lake Country rayon glass polishing pad and a special compound, you can!

This is a technically trickier skill, but anyone with a moderate amount of experience should be able to master it quickly. For faint scratches, a random orbital polisher and a 5” rayon pad will do the trick (deeper scratches may require a rotary and a 3” rayon pad instead for extra, more targeted cut). Glass polishing pads are a different material and work differently to the polishing pads used on paintwork, and when combined with a cerium oxide solution they are aggressive enough to remove scratches in the glass itself, returning a pure optical clarity to the glass. Cerium oxide can be bought as a pre-mixed solution, or you can buy it in powder form and mix it with water yourself; a thin, watery mixture is usually strong enough – start from there, increasing the cerium oxide content if necessary.

What to watch out for

There are three main side-effects to watch out for when machine polishing scratches from glass – heat, scalloping, and chips.

During glass polishing with the rayon pads, heat needs to be controlled, and the best way to achieve this is by misting a small amount of plain water onto the work area at regular intervals, which also helps keep the solution from drying out. If you’re lucky enough to have a glamorous assistant, this is the time to have them nearby!

When tackling shallow scratches across a large area / whole windshield with a 5” rayon pad and random orbital, scalloping is highly unlikely to be a problem. However, if you were to remove a particularly deep scratch in an isolated area it’s possible to create a slight fishbowl/lens effect in the glass, aka ‘scalloping’; you can mitigate this slightly by blending the scratch removal outwards, making the indentation less sharply pronounced.

One final pro-tip is that the cerium oxide solution has an unfortunate habit of setting hard in any chips, becoming practically impossible to remove. In the worst cases this could be more distracting than the chips were to begin with, so under certain circumstances – deep scratches, lots of chips, or a combination of both – it may be best to look at the cost of replacing the windshield.

After machine polishing glass

Once you’ve finished polishing, be sure to wipe away the compound residue fully, and then use I.P.A. with a different microfiber cloth to guarantee a pure surface. If planning to apply a glass coating, I would also recommend cleaning the glass with a panel wipe before the I.P.A. to ensure zero oils are left that could inhibit the coating’s bonding abilities.

For more on this topic, and quite an extreme example, check out this YouTube video featuring Kelly Harris and some unusual scratches on a Porsche window…

Until next time,

Jay @ LC

IG: /jaybroomdetailing 
FB: /jay.broom.detailing
FB group: Detailing with Lake Country

Preparing a Car for a Show

Web Team — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 06:04:00 +0000

I don’t really talk much about it these days but my experience working with / around cars goes back a looooooong way, and actually included organizing car shows. I would arrange for hundreds of supercars to meet under cover of darkness at a secret location, rally out to the countryside, spend hours blasting around a racetrack or airfield, and then finally convoy to an historic estate where they would go on display for tens of thousands of excitable fans.

Of course car shows come in all varieties for some it’s about the modifications, others are marque or model specific – but whatever the theme, if you’re planning to take your car to a show (and you’re not this guy) there’s a good chance you’d like your pride and joy to be looking its best.

In general, preparing for a car show is about keeping on top of the finishing touches. This blog isn’t going to cover the full detailing process – we’ll assume your car is in good order already – rather, these are my top tips for making sure your car reflects well on the big day:

Before you go…

• Check your glass

Sunlight will highlight the smears on the inside just as much, so be sure to clean all your windows inside and out. Here’s a pro-tip: using a Handheld Detailing Light from the outside will help you identify streaks and smears on the inside that might not be obvious under natural / shaded light conditions.

• Don’t miss the shuts and panel gaps

If you’ve been polishing or waxing your car, take a minute to check that there’s no leftover residue along panel edges, in shuts, wheel arches, or basically anywhere that two surfaces meet (such as around PPF). If you do find any, it’s time for some ‘toothpickery’ (as Jim White calls it) which is where you would take a toothpick or barbecue skewer, often wrapped in a microfiber towel, and get those fine details cleaned up properly. Leftover residue in edges and gaps looks awful, and obvious, on a sunny show stand.

• Emergency ‘spot’ polishing

From time to time, cars pick up minor scratches and swirls and if you spot something new that’s letting down your paintwork in an isolated area, why not deal with it using a battery-operated mini machine polisher and some of our 1”, 2” or 3” pads? We manufacture our popular SDO, HDO and microfiber pads in those varieties meaning you can cut and polish away a random defect with extreme precision and convenience. You can even perform minor spot polishing repairs at the show itself, if you’ve got enough time and the weather conditions allow!*

* The caveat to this point is that it could be complicated by timescales, particularly if you have a ceramic coating on your car. Machine polishing has been proven to remove ceramic coatings (check this recent video for proof), so if you have to address a localized area it would be a good idea to do so in advance, leaving enough time to re-coat the affected area and let it cure before the show. Either that, or don’t forget you’ll need to prepare and re-coat that patch when you get home!

• Be organized and on time

There’s nothing worse than a last-minute panic, so save yourself the anxiety by giving your car a proper inspection around a week before the show. I would recommend taking a walk around the car with your Handheld Detailing Light, because its powerful wide beam will highlight certain defects or areas needing attention that natural light, cloud cover or general darkness just don’t reveal.

Add to that – I recommend planning ahead of time by checking your products. You don’t want to discover you’re down to your last dribble of QD when you arrive, so check them off while loading up your key detailing supplies in a dedicated detailing kit, such as the Detailer’s Backpack. In case you didn’t already know, we’ve produced a dedicated backpack for detailers which has separated pockets and holders for compounds, pads, polishers, sprays, everything else mentioned in this article and more. You can pick up one simple bag on show day and head out the door feeling confident that you’re good to go, all bases covered, and no need for a mad rush.

When you get there...

• Carry QD and cloths – lots of cloths, plus a separate bag for used ones

Since washing your car on-site is unlikely to be an option, having plenty of quick detail spray for emergency dust, road grime (especially underneath sills / bumpers), dead bug and dirt removal is a no-brainer; and, because you’ll not want to be inflicting swirls when doing so, make sure you’re carrying as many fresh microfiber towels as you can – spray a problem area liberally, wipe away with one towel, and use a separate one for drying up before discarding your contaminated cloths in a separate bag or container.

• Re-dress your tires – and be sure to remove excess product

I know it’s a cliché, but having smartly dressed tires really does make a huge difference to the presentation of a vehicle, and it’s such a quick and simple process that taking the time to wipe-down and re-dress your tires on site (being sure to remove drippy excess) is always a good idea. I would recommend carrying your tire dressing / applicators / take-off cloths in a separate plastic bag, because that stuff gets everywhere…

• Give those wheels and tailpipes one last wipe

I’m sure you cleaned them properly beforehand, but unless you trailered your vehicle to the show the wheels will have picked up a fine film of brake dust, and the tailpipes just a little soot. Give those areas a little boost back to full brilliance with a simple QD and wipe.

In summary

These are some of my top tips for making sure your car looks its best at a car show – and even though the summer season is over, with Christmas drives and New Year celebrations coming up I’m sure we’ll all be enjoying our cars, often among friends, right the way through into 2023.

Please feel free to share this blog anywhere you want, and write back to me with your own suggestions and experiences – you’ll find me on the major socials.

Until next time,
Jay @ LC

IG: /jaybroomdetailing 
FB: /jay.broom.detailing
FB group: Detailing with Lake Country

What Lights Do Detailers Need?

Web Team — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:30:29 +0000

In our workshop we have over 200 light sources (both fixed and portable) – but they are not all the same, and we use different kinds of lights for different purposes. In this month’s blog we’ll talk about what lighting we use, how we use it, when, and why.

Lighting the way…

Let’s gloss over the history lesson, it’s 2022 after all. Thanks to advances in LED technology, we now have many modern, cost effective, and efficient detailing lighting options that were not available in the days of halogen and fluorescent lamps. It’s a bonus that we can arrange these lights in attractive patterns for Instagram, but I want to focus on their practical purposes (and, in particular, the ways that correct lighting can help detailers achieve better results).

Why do we need good lighting?

Without specialist lighting, we are working blind. If we take a swirly/dull/scratched used car, and we carry out a basic enhancement process (without specialist lighting) to increase the gloss – let’s say a single pass with a finishing foam and a gentle polish, or all-in-one product – then ‘Average Joe’ walking past the car on the street, especially on an overcast day, will be able to see a big improvement, and have a big smile on his face. We know that much of the improvement will be from the fillers in the product, but don’t get me wrong: there is a perfectly decent, honest market for that kind of quick and cheap service. However, if we want to ‘get good’ and truly remove those defects permanently, we need to look closer…

Detailing lights reveal flaws and defects (well, most do, but we’ll come back to this later) so it should be self-evident that we need them to highlight the surface flaws that we’re working to remove. This is how we check on our progress and show the transformative results.

But, detailing lights reveal more and, in doing so, they set the bar for correction higher. Now, our primary goal as detailers buffing a car is to improve the appearance of paint flaws, so perhaps it seems counter-intuitive to deploy the ultra-scrutiny of specialist detailing lights; if we can achieve ‘good-enough’ results (for ‘Average Joe’ at least) without looking too closely, what’s the point? I’ve had first-hand experience of pro detailers shying away from letting inspection lights anywhere near their work, precisely because it makes the results look average. In their view, “why would we intentionally make our lives more difficult, when under most circumstances our clients (such as ‘Average Joe’) are unlikely to be so critical or replicate those conditions themselves?”… right?

Wrong. For at least two reasons.

Firstly, that big ol’ yellow thing in the sky is one heck of a detailing light, with the added kick of being able to degrade any compound oils and fillers too. Like a giant spotlight in the sky (which also moves around to the sides during mornings and evenings), the sun can reveal remaining flaws in the paintwork that you might have missed (or hoped to get away with). Garages and workshops are naturally quite dark places, so having detailing lights on hand – especially portable ones that allow you to check vehicles from multiple angles – are a key tool in assessing our work. Just as importantly, something I learned many moons ago is that what may look good indoors in the workshop could look TERRIBLE the moment the car goes out into daylight. As much as I’m about to explain and demonstrate why it’s important to use specialist detailing lights when you’re polishing a car, the fact is that their bright reflections can also distract you from obvious errors such as compound build-up in edges, ceramic coating high spots and more. So, as well as using many detailing lights from start to end, at our workshop we double-check our completed correction details by talking a walk around the car outside before calling it ‘finished’.

Another thing to bear in mind, particularly if you’re taking on paid paint correction work, is that you never know which clients actually ARE able to replicate your dazzling studio conditions. It doesn’t happen often (in my experience) but remember ‘Average Joe’ isn’t usually paying for your top-dollar correction services, and there are detailing fans out there with their own inspection lights at home, impressive garages that look like studios, and an extremely keen eye for detail. If you give them back their car and they spot something that you missed… that’s not a good look.

What do detailing lights show?

There are three dominant styles of lights that detailers use today: spot, strip, and square. Each style/shape has its benefits and drawbacks. The thing to understand about lighting is that all of these light sources can be used to either highlight or hide paint flaws – which may sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out…

An LED spotlight (such as the new LC Power Tools Handheld Detailing Light – https://www.lcpowertools.com/handheld-detailing-light) is the perfect tool to highlight swirls and scratches on any paint finish. It’s undoubtedly the primary inspection tool that detailers need for everyday correction work. But, if you hold it too close to the surface, the extreme brightness of a spotlight can make it difficult for your eyes to see what’s what, effectively bleaching out imperfections instead of highlighting them.

https://youtu.be/5b7gV0j1WAY

Strip lamps have a straight edge that makes them useful for highlighting orange-peel, etching, dents, some deeper scratches and other surface distortions, but they don’t have that pin-point ability to show swirls, haze or holograms as effectively as spot lights do.

https://youtu.be/plnus2ve364

Diffuse square light panels make for great reflection photos and photographers love them, but they do nothing to highlight swirls, haze or holograms. In fact, when viewed in a reflection they actually do an incredible job of hiding surface flaws through their gentle expansive white glow.

https://youtu.be/6M_4DsVWEY8What’s more, some defects even require the right light at the right angle to see properly, and this is why chasing perfection can be such a challenge. Before joining Lake Country Manufacturing, Kelly and I posted a video about exactly this subject which is extremely illuminating. https://youtu.be/GQoJQW0-jME

How to use detailing lights?

In practice, spotlights are the main go-to in our detailing workshop. They highlight the most common (popular?!) kinds of defects that our clients have noticed (swirls/holograms), making handheld detailing spotlights the most useful defect detection tool under most circumstances. Our recommendation would be to hold or position your handheld detailing spotlight at least an arm’s length from the paint surface in order to reveal as much as possible, without making it difficult for your eyes to adjust to the extreme brightness. Moving the light around often reveals defects that can be easily missed by a static light source, and having that motion is especially helpful when pointing out rotary holograms, which appear to dance and sway on the paint surface as the light source moves around. Spot lights will also, of course, show up your own leftovers. What I mean by that is they will show any haze or dullness caused by your polishing efforts. To counter this, and reach a pure gloss that looks great even under spotlight scrutiny, the chances are you’re going to need to spend longer refining your polishing and/or use a softer finishing pad (with an even finer polish). This might mean you’re doing an extra stage at the end; or, it might mean simply replacing your old style of polishing stage with this finer one. I’ve found that my favorite polishing pads (such as our Black HDO Foam or Black or Red Force foam pads) can actually remove quite a heavy microfiber cutting haze, and refine all the way to perfection, all in one go. Give it a try.

Strip lights have a different set of uses altogether. Their advantage is their straight-edge which, in reflections, will demonstrate where the paint surface is anything other than dead flat. Surface imperfections such as orange-peel, clearcoat runs, silicone fish-eyes, sinkage and dents will distort the straight-edge of the light in a reflection. That’s why it’s helpful to mount strip lights above the vehicle you’re working on, but even better to have them alongside too. Thanks to strip lights, being able to demonstrate a clear and often surprising change in surface texture quality – whether that be the immense ‘smoothing’ effect of sinkage removal which can be achieved with a simple cutting stage, or the more extraordinary glass-like reflections you can create by sanding and polishing to remove orange-peel – is a ‘next-level’ way of creating an impressive paintwork finish in ways many people wouldn’t even realize is possible, proving your expertise as a detailer.

Finally we come to square lights, which photographers adore for their diffused glowing ambience. Commonly grouped together in the ceiling – as seen at many professional detailing ‘studios’ worldwide – these gentle lighting panels seem to drape vehicles with a specular quality that almost looks like something from a video game. Without singular points of origin, banks of square lights illuminate the contours and curves of bodywork making them seem delicately enhanced, with subtle highlights and shadows falling in ways that really show off the lines and shapes of the car beneath. These lights are, however, utterly useless for detailing purposes. When you see the reflection of a square light panel on a car’s surface, it has the effect of neutralizing / hiding the surface flaws on that area of the panel. Instead of the surface flaws, you see a ‘white-out’ zone where anything but the most major scratches and chips all but vanish. This is why square light panels are a very poor choice of detailing light. And yet, we have them in our workshop….. but why?

Speaking from personal experience, we have a zone near the entrance of our workshop where a range of spot lights, strip lamps and square panels are mounted around a car. Each type of light is wired up separately on a remote clicker, meaning I can turn them on and off instantly, and I have used this to educate countless pupils and customers of their effects. It never fails to amaze people when I light their car up under the square lights, making them look artificially quite good, and then suddenly switch to the spotlights. If only I could capture the look on their faces when the true horror of a million swirls and scratches and etchings and other problems ‘magically’ appear. I compound this by changing from spot lights to strip lamps, and now rather than the swirls we’re faced with ripples of orange-peel, and texture of sinkage… It is a stunning ‘party-trick’ routine that never fails to impress my customers with its visual impact, but it also leaves them appreciating the fact that they are now better informed, and more confident in my knowledge and abilities as a detailing professional.

https://youtu.be/XPProi7_ZFo

This brings us to the final and most important point of this rather long blog. Detailing lights are not just necessary for effectively detecting and highlighting defects. As much as we use them in our workshop to point out surface flaws and check on our progress, they prove equally as useful on handover day when they are brought out to highlight the absence of defects. Whether you’re polishing cars for yourself or clients, being able to confidently inspect or present your work under critical detailing lights is like a slam dunk, a home run, and a mic-drop all in one. It’s a bold move that demonstrates irrefutable proof of your skills, the value in your work, and the integrity in your services.

In summary / TL;DR:

Specialist detailing lights add value to what we do, because with them we are better able…

To truly understand and appreciate our own work
To test ourselves and improve our knowledge and skills
To educate our clients, manage their expectations, and guide their decisions
To ensure our results are of the right quality, and avoid reputation-damaging errors
To impress hot chicks at parties with our detailed knowledge of defect detection methods

To learn more about paint correction, please stay tuned to our social media channels and feel free to email us with any questions. We may even address yours specifically in a video response!

Until next time,
Jay @ LC

IG: /jaybroomdetailing 
FB: /jay.broom.detailing
FB group: Detailing with Lake Country

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One Step – How to Make More Money with a Single Stage Correction

Web Team — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:00:00 +0000

Machine polishing a car: a therapeutic hobby for some, but a crucial source of income for others. This month’s blog goes out to all the hard working detailers and car care professionals out there because times are TOUGH right now, and we feel it too.

Machine polishing cars takes time, along with associated fixed and variable expenses such as materials and utility bills. The problem is that most detailers – myself included – have an innate desire to create a perfect finish, which is hard to satisfy quickly. When machine polishing a car, we want to remove every defect possible and go through as many stages as it takes to achieve an ever more perfect gloss – but (frustratingly) often we can’t. There isn’t enough time, because there isn’t enough money. And there isn’t enough money, because a) your costs are rising and b) your clients’ disposable income is being eroded, both thanks to inflation. So what can we do?

Efficiency is the key. Most detailers already offer paint correction packages promising different levels of results at different price points, so there is a consensus among detailers and clients alike that ‘a compromise’ of some kind has to be acceptable. But what if, instead of taking two or more machine polishing stages, you could save a lot of time and achieve 90% of the correction and 90% of the final gloss all in one go? If you can achieve results so similar to a two or three stage correction in just one single stage that the difference is barely noticeable, what are the implications?

To me, that smells like opportunity. I think there are cost-conscious clients who would pay for that, and business-minded detailers who can identify the marginal gains.

Let me first make one thing clear: a single-stage paint correction cannot be equal to a multi-stage correction. This is because of the mechanics involved. A one-step polishing pad must have enough abrasive cut to remove minor swirls and surface defects, but that’s the exact same reason it will not be able to hit the ultimate levels of final gloss that a dedicated finishing pad could achieve. Pad material trades off between its cutting power, and ultimate gloss performance.

Lake Country Manufacturing One-Step Microfiber Pads

Step forward: the newly-revised Lake Country Manufacturing One-Step Microfiber pad!

As we all have to adapt to the changes in our industry, the One-Step Microfiber pad (the ‘OSP’) is a response that gives detailers an option. Developed using the very latest microfiber technology, the OSP is a machine polishing pad designed with an extreme breadth of capabilities – able to cut out minor swirls and scratches, and also finish down to a beautiful consistent gloss, all in one step. But how?

The magic comes from the combination of materials and the construction. In our testing facility, we put dozens of microfiber and foam combinations through their paces to try and come up with a pad that suits the needs of the day. Naturally the properties of the microfiber itself have a big impact on how well the pad performs; we wanted a microfiber that cuts well and leaves minimal haze, but also one that is less prone to clogging, easy to maintain and durable. The length, density and other properties of microfiber strands all contribute to the pad’s performance on a polisher, and help to define its place in the detailing studio. Alongside these tests we mounted a range of microfibers to different foam backings, since the foam density and shape also affect how the pad performs, as well as its ‘feel’.

The result is the new Lake Country One-Step Microfiber pad: a machine polishing pad with the potential to open avenues to new, or renewed, business. Where most one-step pad solutions tend to offer ‘good cut / not so good refinement’ or vice versa, here is an alternative that can truly cover both of those bases and which detailers can take advantage of to offer a higher-quality package at a lower price point – saving money in the process.

Conclusion

Sure, there will always be some high rollers who will continue to spend top dollar for your ultimate services. As I wrote earlier, you would be able to reach higher levels of perfection using dedicated cutting and finishing pads, and if you have the clients and they are happy to pay for your extra time and expense then that is all fantastic!

But, for many detailing businesses in the real world, those clients account for quite a small portion of the overall customer base. If most of your work comes from 2-5 year old upper/mid range sedans and sports cars – many of those clients are feeling the pinch, let me tell you. And what I’m hearing frequently is they are:

Planning on keeping their current car for longer, and so want it ‘refreshed’ but at a reasonable price point, or
Looking to sell (or return) what was until recently an affordable luxury item, and need it inexpensively polished in order to maximise the sale or trade-in value

With that in mind and the OSP pad ready to go, even if you already have a one-step package on offer, this is an opportunity to drive home a premium / higher value-for-money service at a more comfortable price point. Sitting somewhere between a ‘full correction’ and an ‘enhancement’ you’ve got a new service to promote, quicker to execute, cheaper to produce, and which perhaps gives you another reason to contact your client base and re-engage. Why not?

As we all face the challenges of the global economic maelstrom together, here’s hoping we can help tip the odds back in your favour, even if only in a small way.

Until next time,
Jay @ LC UK

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Waxstock Recap & More

Web Team — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 14:59:14 +0000

This month’s blog is a little different – stay tuned for more tips, tricks, how-to’s and technical help, but this time I want to bring you behind the scenes with the UK team, specifically a ‘Jay’s-eye-view’, and write about the crazy few weeks we’ve just had. It’s been eventful…

Interviews and video tests

We kicked off with special-guests at our facility. For those of you who don’t know, in its previous guise as ‘KDS Keltec’ Kelly Harris was responsible for developing our two-storey custom-designed shrine to car care. We’ve got multiple types of car lifts, air lines, a spray booth, 200+ fixed lights (some strip, some spot, some square, all zoned on remote controls), not to mention all the diagnostic and experimental instruments, test panels, tools, compounds and other gadgets a detailing engineer could ever wish for. And, since joining Lake Country, we’ve expanded our training and testing zone area even further.

Naturally, this means we’re keen to invite detailers to visit; not long ago we welcomed Jim ‘White Details’ White for a collaboration, as well as Mat ‘The Detailing Space’ Reynolds and others, so when we heard Jack ‘Cav’ Cavanagh wanted to come and meet Kelly (who he’s followed for some time) we were delighted.

For those who haven’t heard of him yet, Jack – or ‘Cav’ as he prefers to be known – is ‘Mr Stjarnagloss’ and one half of Top Gear’s Clean Team. He announced his arrival with the bark of a racy sounding E46 M3, shod with semi slick tyres and loaded with cheeky winks and excitement (if you’ve ever seen him on Instagram you’ll know exactly what I mean). After a quick facility tour his inquisitive side took over and we spent a couple of days exploring the pros and cons of different types of aftercare products, doing practical demonstrations, even assisting him with some polishing tips that he put straight to good use (using the UDOS 51E) on his own car.

I have to say, Cav’s every bit as funny and likeable as his on-screen persona but when the cameras aren’t rolling he’s also got a really genuine, sincere and professional side to him, grounded by a real thirst for knowledge (which explains why he’s been such a fan of Kelly for many years).

After filling ourselves with cheeseburger pizza – a hideous but also wonderful abomination – we sat down with Cav to shoot some LC Talks episodes (compered once again by the wittiest man in detailing, Bert Youell of Pro Detailer Magazine) which pitted Kelly against Cav in the battle of the LSPs: “Ceramics vs. Wax.”

Finally, we took things up a notch with and film some real-life, unrehearsed, unscripted product destruction tests. On a finely sanded panel – intentionally left dull to simulate uniform surface defects – we applied a variety of products to see a) how much filling (gloss-adding) they were capable of, and b) what it would take to fully remove them, to simulate durability. Later, we did something similar with ceramic coatings and in both cases results were surprising to say the least. Spoiler alert: I felt almost cruel letting Bert struggle to remove old high spots, but it made for some fun footage. Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel to catch these videos as they release!

Waxstock 2022

The annual Waxstock show – postponed for the last two years thanks to a public health situation – is probably the largest dedicated car care event “in Europe, if not globally” (according to the website) attracting hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of visitors. Oddly, despite examples of my work having been exhibited previously, somehow I had never attended in the past – and this was about to be my first major public event as a representative of Lake Country. It was also the first Lake Country event to be planned and manned by the new UK team so, although none of us are new to the game, it was still going to be a learning experience…

This being a fresh start for Lake Country outside of the US meant that we had the opportunity to develop a brand new show setup. In the lead up to the show we had settled on a flexible design – simple, clear, future-proofed with artwork options, and configurable for multiple layouts. We’ll be using it at HQ as a backdrop in our training zone from now on, and taking it with us to other events where our pitch might be a different layout altogether (such as it will be at Automechanika in September).

However, deciding that we could go one better, at the very last minute – and I mean on the Bank Holiday Friday afternoon before we set off Saturday morning – while we were just about finished with loading the van, Kelly was custom building some metal framework. Using bits and pieces, brainwaves, guesstimates and adrenaline, Kelly built mods that allowed us to mount test panels onto the transport ‘buckets’ which the stand is stored in. This gave us a dual-podium setup, helping with storage and making it much easier to do demos and project to a larger audience. Hopefully a few people reading this came along and saw for themselves?

The Saturday morning bacon and coffee fuelled drive to the CBS Arena in Coventry was a smooth one, with cab conversation mostly on the exploits of our preferred automotive vloggers (hey Seen Through Glass, Kelly and Sam are both avid fans!).

Setting up the stand was made much easier by the fact that we had assembled and disassembled the whole thing at HQ twice in the week beforehand. Briefly, I had a brain fart and was concerned we’d left a few key components 100 miles away but it turned out we had everything present and correct, exactly as it should be. Great success!

As exhibitors we were invited to join a huge dinner on the Saturday evening, hosted by the Waxstock organisers. After a rousing speech from PJ welcoming us all to the show, we enjoyed a very smart three course dinner that was improved – in my humble opinion – by a special sauce that our table-mate Mike Phillips had brought along with him.

Others at the table couldn’t handle the heat but I’m into that kind of thing, so we talked hot sauce for a while before a few drinks over a few hours and a trip to the casino… at which point things become ever so slightly hazy, although I’m reliably informed that I spent a good amount of time discussing – in excruciating math-laden detail – the physics involved in the action of a random orbital polisher under different pressure conditions. What can I say – it was a work event after all!

Sunday morning gave us time for an enormous breakfast, after which I saw the huge queues at the entrance. Damp weather did put a small number of attendees off coming, which I can understand – part of the show is an outdoor ‘show and shine’ and if you’ve just preened your car to perfection, do you really want to drive it through the rain to be judged? However, there were thousands. Absolutely thousands of visitors and they all seemed to come through the entrance doors at once! Within minutes I was being asked great questions from all sides about our products; by midday I had lost a good chunk of my voice. I think I spent half my time, maybe more, up on the podium removing sanding marks, demonstrating the benefits of microfibre pads, explaining efficiency-boosting techniques, even accepting myth-busting challenges from certain well-known industry figures…. You know who you are And I absolutely loved it. The day flew by. I don’t think I left the stand for water until 3.30pm (and I completely missed the stage slots that Kelly had) but it was such a lot of fun, and the people I had interactions with were all so receptive and engaging that I could have done it all again straight away.

Sadly, I couldn’t do it all again. Closing time arrived, and immediately we had to disassemble the stand, pack it all up, hit the road back to Kent – stopping only briefly for a disappointing KFC, and arriving home in horrendous rainy weather after 10pm on Sunday night.

3D / Mike Phillips

Feeling exhausted, we did the sensible thing and took a day or two off. Right? Well, no.

We were unloading the van first thing Monday morning, and spent the day setting up the entire trade stand again in our new training area along with all the demo kit, polishers, compounds, pads, trolleys, trestles and panels in readiness for two days of training with special guest Mike Phillips – the hot sauce guy – from 3D Car Care.

In collaboration once again with our friend Bert Youell of Pro Detailer Magazine and the PVD, we covered many ‘myths’ around sanding and products, before deep diving into aspects of advanced paint technology that we don’t often get to talk about.

Unfortunately Mike missed out on a portion of the first day – he wasn’t feeling so good – so myself and Yancy stepped in until Mike was able to make a grand entrance in the afternoon, just in time for pizza (again…)

The second half of the day was spent mainly on practical training, with participants given the chance to try out 3D’s clever new sanding system alongside their range of products and the full Lake Country / LC Power Tools suite. It’s always fun and immensely satisfying to help people learn new tricks and watch them grow in confidence as they progress. Nevertheless, and as I’d anticipated, Mike’s demonstrations often took another approach to how Kelly or I would teach and it was interesting to see how pupils received different information and put it to the test.

Mike’s long and undeniably distinguished career spans many decades and is not to be sniffed at; even so, I found it fascinating to learn how and why an old-school (he won’t mind me saying that) all-American might take an alternative view on certain techniques or processes, compared to the ways that I and many others in the UK and Europe do. My suspicion is that a lot of it comes down to the different expectations and budgets of customers in different international markets, although I’m certain there’s more to it than that. Let’s talk about that another day.

Before the days drew to a close with an extended Q&A, we dedicated about an hour to glass scratch removal and demonstrating the capabilities of our Rayon pads. We just needed to a suitably ‘tired’ old car to work on…. luckily, Bert’s Subaru was close by…

And Then ...

Oh and did I mention I immediately followed all that by detailing, and recording myself detailing, a one-of-a-kind Lamborghini Countach so that I can make my own YouTube mini-feature for you guys? I think there’s about 8 hours of footage I need to go through, which will take me a while, although I did post a little outtake already: spot the intruder!

And Finally ...

Yep. I thought I was just tired from the guest interviews, the mad rush of Waxstock, the continuation with Mike Phillips, and the tricky/long job on the Countach.

You guessed it…. turns out, it was Covid. Mike had it too. Kelly as well. No wonder we were all exhausted, and (not that it counts as a rest) I’m looking forward to spending some time holed up in the editing suite for a while!

I’ll be back with a regular blog next month. Meanwhile, you can find me on Insta and Bookface at the links right here. See ya!

IG: /jaybroomdetailing
FB: /jay.broom.detailing
FB group: ‘Detailing with Lake Country’

Why You NEED the Detailer’s Backpack

Web Team — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 13:30:11 +0000

When I first started detailing in 2006, like a total noob, I carried all my equipment and products loose in a flimsy plastic box – which I transported to jobs on the passenger seat of my Lotus Elise. Let me tell you, that was FAR from ideal and if I were starting out today, I would have LOVED something as convenient as the LC Power Tools Detailer’s Backpack to keep all my things organized!

Your polishing tools are your best friends, and polishes, pads, compounds and cloths are essential components of every detailer’s kit. LC Power Tools know that it’s crucial to take care of your equipment and have everything you need in hand, so we’ve designed the Detailer’s Backpack as the ultimate everyday backpack for you! These are the top four reasons you need the LC Power Tools Detailer’s Backpack:

Holds Three Polishers

Modern detailers use a variety of techniques, honed and specialized over the years, which now include the use of ultra-accessible mini and micro polishers alongside full-sized rotary and orbital polishers. The Detailer’s Backpack caters to that requirement with designated storage spaces for two main polishers and a 3” tool too, as well as a mesh pocket for the selection of pads you need. Being able to carry three polishers comfortably in a dedicated backpack is a first-of-its-kind innovation!

Protective Base

Unlike ordinary backpacks, the LC Power Tools Detailer’s Backpack has a durable blow-molded hard shell base that can withstand the heavy-duty needs of a detailer on the go. Your tools and bottles will be protected from drops and other impacts, and its sturdy form means you can load and unload your equipment with the backpack upright.

Engineered Pocket System

Brushes, pads, inspection LEDs, towels, compounds and polishes – the Detailer’s Backpack has different-sized elasticated pockets inside made from a durable stain-resistant material for all your detailing essentials. We’ve also added dedicated waterproof pockets for your phone and tablet, so you can keep all your items tidy, secure and separate. On the exterior sides, we’ve added extra pockets for your detailing sprays and cleaning chemicals, and because we know that during your detailing process things are going to get used and dirty, we’ve included multiple D-rings which you can clip other accessories to – such as a soiled cloth bag.

Padding & Comfort

All that polishing equipment could be heavy to lug around, but the plush padded straps and additional cushioning positioned smartly on the back of your LC Power Tools Detailer’s Backpack soften pressure points and prevent any digging in. You can carry all your essentials in comfort – and with your hands free!

Conclusion

Next time you’re heading out to polish a friend or client’s car, be prepared, work smart and stay classy with the LC Power Tools Detailer’s Backpack

Until Next Time,
Jay @ LC UK

Scared to Polish Your Car?

Web Team — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 13:30:48 +0000

Machine polishing can seem daunting at first. Most people recognize that there are risks involved and that mistakes could be costly, so it’s no wonder that the first baby steps in machine polishing can feel like a giant leap to some. It seems like there’s just too much to learn!

Welcome, then, to the most reassuring introductory blog about machine polishing on the whole internet. In a few short paragraphs, with absolutely zero jargon, I’m going to make machine polishing for the first time sound like the easy, safe, and rewarding process that it really is.

What are Paint Defects?

Super-fine surface flaws such as scratches, wash marring, swirl marks, and stains that corrupt the very top surface of your paintwork and combine to leave it looking tired and unpleasant, lacking in luster.

What is Machine Polishing?

‘Polishing’ is all about abrasion – slightly wearing away the paint surface to make it smoother (and shinier). ‘Machine polishing’ is using a machine to do the job more efficiently and neatly than you can do it by hand.

Why Machine Polish Paint?

Machine polishing your paint will wear away a very fine amount of the surface material. If your paint surface is scratched, stained, hazy, or dull, what’s left behind after machine polishing will be shiny, glossy, and beautiful.

Why Do I Need to Start Machine Polishing?

I would recommend a complete beginner look into acquiring an 8 or 9mm random orbital polisher, a medium cutting compound, a finishing polish, and a handful of Lake Country SDO Orange and Black pads. You will need a stack of clean microfiber towels and a roll of low-tack masking tape. And, if you have a portable LED spotlight, you’re practically a pro already!

How Should I Machine Polish for the First Time?

Prepare Your Vehicle

Clean your car, making sure to get rid of tar spots and bugs, and any other stuck junk from the paint surface. There are tar and glue removers available that will help with this. After washing and rinsing, dry the car off and park it somewhere shaded and shielded from the elements. Next, it would be a good idea to clay the painted panels. This involves thoroughly rubbing the paint surface with a clay towel or clay bar (and a clay lubricant), which draws embedded microscopic dirt, fallout, and other foreign particles out from the paint. Afterward, your paint should feel extremely slick and smooth.

Prepare Your Equipment & Working Area

Make sure your machine polisher, pads, cloths, and compounds (one medium cut compound, one very fine polish) can be picked up and put down comfortably—somewhere they’ll all stay clean—while you’re working. This could be a special cart or workbench, plastic box, or a cupboard—it’s up to you. Ideally your car will be somewhere cool, and shielded from the elements. Dust-free helps, so if you can work indoors that’s an advantage. Get your favorite station, podcast, or playlist up and running.

Prepare Your Test Zone

Before we begin, I’ve got to make some assumptions here. I’ve got to assume that your paintwork is in ‘normal’ condition—by which I mean it’s not flaking off the panel, showing signs of unprofessional repair work, or key-scratched to oblivion. Challenges like those require experienced technicians to assess and rectify. We need to be talking about minor swirl marks, haziness, dullness, or staining here!

Let’s practice on a nice wide flat section of the hood. Take your Orange SDO pad and visualize a square or rectangle approximately 9 to 12 times the size of the pad. Mask the outline of the shape if it helps.

(Avoid polishing over swage lines and creases at this stage – paint on those is usually slightly thinner, AND the shape creates low surface area / higher pressure contact points thereby increasing cut. Swage lines should be polished ‘up to,’ but not ‘over’, to avoid removing too much material.)

It's Time to Be Brave...

Line your Orange SDO pad up centrally on the machine polisher backing plate, and prime it by spreading the medium cutting compound lightly across the whole pad face. Keeping a comfortable and relaxed posture, put pad to paintwork in the top left-hand corner of your section.

With the polisher speed set around halfway, using just a little more downward pressure than the weight of the machine, work the section in overlapping motions, allowing the pad to travel at around two or three ‘pad widths per second’:

• left to right
• move down half a pad width
• right to left
• down half a pad width
• left to right
• back to the start
• repeat for around 90 seconds

If you find the polisher jumping around awkwardly, try increasing the speed a little more. If it feels like it’s going crazy fast, reduce it. An ideal speed would likely be in the 2500 – 3000 opm range, if your polisher has those ratings to refer to.

Try to work methodically – robotically, even – so that your section is polished equally (and when it comes to polishing the next section, have that overlap the previous one by half a pad width and you’ll maintain consistent results).

Carefully unmask your section, and gently / gradually (don’t scrub hard) wipe away your compound residue with a clean microfiber towel, flipping it if necessary to inspect your results.

What to Expect From Beginner Machine Polishing

Now you have experienced paint correction, and I bet it wasn’t so scary after all. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see a clear change in the glossiness of the paint you just polished. You may notice that the surface defects that were there—the swirls, stains, haze, etc.—have been partially (or even fully) removed. So, does this mean you removed a lot of paint? Isn’t that dangerous?

Is Machine Polishing Safe?

If you closely followed the guidance above, I would confidently predict that:

You removed less than one micron of clearcoat from your vehicle. One micron is around 2% of the depth of standard OEM clearcoat. One micron is around 3% of the thickness of a dollar bill.
The paint never got more than ‘warm’ (and nor was it supposed to – there is no need for the paint to get hot). However, if it did get warm to the touch, do not be alarmed. Clearcoat is baked at around 60 degrees Celsius / 140 Fahrenheit in the production process. Dark-colored cars on hot sunny days can hit 85C / 185F on their top surfaces, which is hot enough to feel like a burn if you touch it.
It’s likely that you didn’t achieve ‘full’ correction.

What is 'Full Correction'?

‘Full correction’ is what we call it when we polish away (remember: it’s all just abrasion) every single visible defect from the paint surface. This is where it’s possible to make a big mistake. In fact, I wrote a blog about it already!

When paint defects are very minor (shallow), full correction is safe to attempt. The problem is, it is not possible to accurately measure the depth of a scratch. So, if you try to be a hero and it turns out your defects approach, or exceed, the depth of all the clearcoat, then you cannot achieve full correction because there will be no clearcoat left. That’s called ‘screwing up.’ So, remember: it’s OK to improve rather than perfect.

Back to you and your test patch – it’s likely that some of your surface defects are deeper into the surface than would be removed by one gentle pass, and if so, you have a choice. You can either:

A) Go again, removing more clearcoat to further / fully remove the visible defects
B) Stop because you’re happy enough with the improvement / results already
C) Move to a refining stage to achieve an even deeper, more ‘pure’ gloss

Why Do I Need to Refine With a Machine Polisher?

All that work you did with the Orange SDO pad and medium cutting compound should have made the paint more glossy and shiny. However, now try masking halfway through it and repeat the process on one half using the Black SDO pad and a finishing polish. The likelihood (especially if you’re working on a darker colored car) is that you’ll see another improvement, and this is because although the correction work you did the first time around removed some of the defects, it left behind a faint and uniform haze all of its own making. Switching to the less aggressive polish and pad rectifies that haze and takes you even closer to ‘pure’ gloss. Best of all, in the refining process, you’ll remove so little paint material that it will be unmeasurable in any meaningful way. Basically, nothing at all. Nada. You have nothing to fear, so take the free win!

Conclusion

I hope this blog has relaxed your machine polishing anxieties. Our Standard Duty Orbital (SDO) pads have been specifically designed to make machine polishing as safe and accessible as can be—and by starting out with the Orange and Black SDO pads, in particular, you’ll discover quickly that there’s nothing to be afraid of. So, take that first step. I promise it’s tiny.

You can do it!

How Lake Country Can Increase the Value of Your Car

Web Team — Tue, 10 May 2022 13:30:34 +0000

Right now, the knock-on effects of a complex economic situation are forcing many of us to take a closer look at our finances. Prices seem to be going up rapidly, while a whole variety of materials and goods seem to be in short supply – especially when it comes to new vehicles, which are suffering from numerous supply chain shortfalls and delays. We are getting regular calls at our detailing shop with the same message: ‘my new car delivery has been delayed and I don’t know when it’s coming.’ That’s a headache for any detailing business, where tightly planning your diary can be the difference between profit and significant loss. However, it’s also presenting a new kind of opportunity because the short supply of new cars makes used ones more valuable. Put it this way – a buyer wants a new car but can’t get one. The next best thing isn’t just a used car— it’s a used car that looks and feels like a new one, and there are two ways to get that: buy one from someone else, or make one of your own! This is where Lake Country can step in to help, not just with our range of products but with the advice we’ll share in this blog and on our YouTube channel. We genuinely hope that with this guidance, you will be able to increase the value of your car, whether you’re planning to sell it or keep hold of it for a while longer. Here are my top tips to make a used car look and feel like a new one:

Clean It Really, Really Well

Cleaning a car to look and feel like new takes so much more than a wash mitt and shampoo. Sure, that’s part of the process, but when you look closely, you may find that there are traces and types of grime built up that subtly but totally ruin the ‘new car’ illusion. Water (containing various minerals) and dirt, mixing together and then drying out again, gradually build up a crust-like substance most noticeably in and around edges, panel shuts and gaps, hinges, badges, and at the bottom, sides and corners of windshields. When training pupils on how to clean a car, I explain that one of the most important parts of the job is actually concentrated on removing this built-up grime. The product I use to do that is a high-quality detailer’s water spot remover, sometimes applied with a cotton swab, sometimes with a folded microfiber towel, whatever makes sense for the task at hand. Water spot removers contain chemicals that dissolve this kind of dirt, so the only tricky thing is training yourself to look for and identify it in the first place.

Take a look at these two images and – once you see it, you can’t unsee it – you’ll notice the subtle but huge difference it makes to the presentation of the vehicle when you get rid of this built-up grime, which in this example has gathered along the seam weld inside the trunk hatch:

It goes without saying that deploying such careful attention to detail in your interior is also worthwhile, but in this blog, I’m going to concentrate on the parts of the car that are outside the cabin itself. Perhaps we’ll revisit interior tips another time – drop us a message or comment if you’re interested.

Decontamination

We generally discourage feeling your paintwork with your hands because it’s so easy to inflict swirl marks. When paint is properly decontaminated, it has a much smoother, far less grabby surface feel, which gives the impression of it being ‘new.’ To achieve this, there are various fallout removers available that dissolve away ferrous contaminants that have embedded themselves in your car’s paint (such as brake dust and other industrial particles), and others which melt off the unsightly tar spots that typically lurk down the sides of a car. These form part of the wash process, but for the ultimate paint decontamination — once your car is clean and dry — we might suggest using a clay towel / clay cloth / clay bar (with appropriate lubrication) to remove what remains. Rubbing across the surface with clay draws out any stubborn contaminants that couldn’t be removed by washing and cleaning, leaving a silky smooth feel to the paintwork that can’t be beat. The only downside to using clay is that the process can very slightly marr the paint surface, leaving ultra-fine scratches behind. Fortunately, these will be incredibly light and you can easily machine polish them away.

Machine Polishing

The world’s most skilled professional detailers, given perfect sterile working conditions and all the tools, equipment and time that they need, still have to push themselves to produce polishing results that they could regard as perfect. ‘Perfection’ is seldom achieved. Thanks to the law of diminishing returns, those last few per cent take the longest time (and therefore expense) to reach, raising the question of the value in doing so if the car is going to be used, and get dirty, and inevitably pick up minor swirls at some point in future. There must be a compromise and an agreement between the detailer and customer. So detailers generally offer machine polishing packages that align with client expectations, both raising and answering the question ‘how close to perfection is good enough?’

In practice, and fortunately, machine polishing your car to achieve ‘a dramatic improvement’ (rather than total perfection) is a relatively straightforward and accessible process even for the everyday novice or amateur. In fact, it’s downright easy. Working at a home garage or driveway, you really can get rid of swirls, staining and light scratches with nothing more than an inexpensive random orbital polisher, a polish, and a small selection of LC pads.

I would recommend a complete beginner look into acquiring an 8 or 9mm random orbital polisher, a medium cutting compound, a finishing polish, and a handful of Lake Country SDO Blue, Orange and Black pads. That’s really all you need (OK, you’ll need some clean microfiber cloths too) to take any car’s dull, stained, swirly, lightly scratched paintwork and transform it into a showroom example!

A typical way to get started is to work on a section of your roof or hood. To establish a baseline, take your Orange SDO pad and your medium cutting compound and visualize a square or rectangle approximately 9 to 12 times the size of the pad. Line your pad up centrally on the backing plate and prime it by spreading the compound lightly across the pad face. Keeping a comfortable and relaxed posture, put pad to paintwork with gentle pressure and (with the polisher speed set around halfway) work that section in overlapping motions – left to right, move down half a pad width; right to left, down half a pad width; left to right, back to the start and so on, for around 2 minutes. Try to work methodically – robotically, even – so that your section is polished equally. Carefully wipe away your polish residue with a clean microfiber towel, and inspect your results.

Congratulations! You have now experienced paint correction. Don’t forget—you can adapt your technique and use different pads/compounds to cut more aggressively (maybe with the Blue SDO pad), OR polish more gently for an even finer gloss (that’s what the Black SDO is for).

Be sure to follow our YouTube Channel, where we post lots of informative content that will help you get to grips with polishing a car like new in no time!

Glass

Here’s a great hack – you can machine polish your glass. Most people clean their glass when they wash their car, but have you noticed that when you take a damp cloth and wipe it across your ‘clean’ windshield, you can usually see streaky/stained patterns as it dries? This proves there’s some staining going on and your everyday glass cleaner isn’t going to shift it. One of the quickest ways to truly clean your glass is to machine polish it. In our shop, we frequently use some of our older microfibre cutting pads and a little compound on the windshield and other exterior windows just to strip all that staining away. Followed up with an alcohol-based cleaner (we just use Isopropyl Alcohol diluted 1:1 with distilled water)—this will leave a smear-free and super-clean surface ready for a glass coating. Quality hydrophobic glass coatings perform noticeably better when applied to glass that has been prepared in this way, and having rainwater beading off backward as you drive through bad weather not only looks cool, it reinforces that feeling of having a ‘special’ car!

Finishing Touches

Speaking from experience, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to put real time and effort into cleaning and dressing your door shuts, polishing your exhaust tips, and neatly dressing your tires. Hopefully, you remembered to clean your shuts when you washed the car (see my first point). I professionally recommend using an all-purpose cleaner, a degreaser, and sometimes a tar and glue remover (with a combination of appropriate detailing brushes and microfiber cloths) to shift old grease and dirt from the hinges, around the rubbers and so on. Since you’ve taken the time to leave them spotless, I would also suggest using a spray sealant or wax on the paint in the shuts to complete the task. Door shuts that look and feel like new make a massive difference to the impression you have of a car when you get in and out of it, as does the glint from a nicely polished tailpipe and the contrast of an evenly dressed tire.

Conclusion

I hope you find these tips helpful; mark my words, if you follow this advice, you’ll be hearing the most common thing that my clients say to me every week when they collect their detailed car from our shop:

“That looks brand new!”

And that’s exactly what you want a prospective buyer to say.

Until next time,
Jay @ LC UK