car paint restorer can really only work ...

...on car paint problems where laquer has not been applied to the painted finish.

But lacquer can help when removing a light car paint scratch. History of car paint before the introduction of the lacquer finish!

I wanted to talk a little on car paint restorer.

Before the common practice of applying a lacquer coat to cars, the paint was applied very thinly in multiple layers. This was done in order to produce a strong long lasting and durable layer that would last for some time before oxidation broke the colour down.

The technique has been used in coach building for hundreds of years and a perfectly flat shiny surface was being accomplished well before the spray gun was invented.

history of car paint

I read a book by a chap called Adam Smith called “Wealth of Nations” and he spoke at some length about gentlemen and their love of spending money on carriages

Indeed I found it amusing to note that the gentlemen in the 1700’s were as particular about spending money on their carriages as we are today.

Well it wasn’t so long ago you could liven the paint on a car by using a product such as T Cut as a car paint restorer.

If you had any sort of blemish on the paintwork of the auto you would pour some T Cut on a cloth and start re buffing the panel until you once again restored the paint to a perfect finish.

If you remember you could look at the cloth you were buffing the panel with and you could see the pigment all over the cloth, This is the fine layer of paint only microns thick you had removed — rather like sanding a wooden floor to expose the original wood grain!

Indeed some vehicles still use this technique — new agricultural vehicles for some reason use this largely superseded method of paint application.

And do not think for one moment just because they are agricultural the finish is in any way inferior. The factory takes just as much care over the finish of a new tractor as any car — We just happen to see them covered in mud!

Now, however the finish of any major car manufacture is not the buffed actual pigment that makes up the paint surface.

The finish is a clear diamond hard lacquer that will polish to a high shine and able to take modern silicone based finishes.

A bit like varnish on wood.

A great example.

If you are the owner of a red car and the paint pigment has faded, some of the old school folks might have advised you to T Cut or polish the paint to restore the panel to its’ original pristine condition — because that used to work in the past.

Unfortunate you would be wasting your time.

You will never polish through the lacquer coat (Actually I did meet someone who did once! But in took him every Sunday morning for 18 months!)

The faded oxidised paint is being protected by the lacquer coat.

And even if you were to use a machine mop to do the job the result would not be the same as a car manufactured without lacquer.

The point where you break through the paint layer would expose a dull lustreless finish because the modern paint was never designed to be polished and buffed.

It is too thin compared to the original traditional methods of carriage making.

The layer that is the painted surface has not been designed to by polished to a high shine — rather our modern paint technology relies ont the lacquer to provide that service.

However the lacquer does have an advantage when it comes to polishing a light car paint scratch.

Modern car paint restorers work in quite a different way.

Michael McIntyre on Scottish people

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