best lighting for spotting swirl marks
- Thread starter lazybum
- Start date
topnotchtouch
New member
I use a combination of techniques. I have the Craftsman tripod mounted 1200 Watt Halogens, a hand held flourescent work light as well as a flashlight. The Halogens are perfect for the horizontal surfaces. I use the work light and a flashlight for the vertical surfaces as well as the bumpers with all the different angles.
SuperBuick
Member
pure sunlight
I don't know that there is a best light to see swirls. Different light shows different things. There are defects that I can only see in sun light, they don't show up under halogen. There are defects that only show up under metal halide (SP?) lights in the parking lots. The flourescents at the gas station reveal defects I can't see with other light sources. I think you need a variety of light sources to see everything. Then there is the angle of the light and how you position yourself. I find it to be a PITA on silver. Darker colors are much easier to find defects on.
As a part-time hobbyist I must say that getting all the defects out is truly a PITA. After much PC work, I've only gotten the grosser swirls out and have "miles to go before i sleep..."
I hate to say this, but i really wish there were a good filler wax that would hide the unremovable swirls most of the time. It ain't purist, but it's practical.
Would the swirls still be there after a wash? Sure! But rewaxing it beats the work of getting out every last one of those suckers, especially if you have black and don't have a rotary or want to work with one.
Accumulator
Well-known member
Lazybum- Welcome to Autopia. What stevet said :xyxthumbs
In my experience, the portable fluorescent strips don't show marring well at all. You'd be better off with a regular, old-fashhioned, incandescent trouble light. I use five different light sources for swirl-spotting because as everyone's saying, different light reveals different defects.
One good trick for any kind of lighting is to turn off all the *other* lights. Looking for marring with one light in an otherwise dark garage works great for me.
jvcn- Yeah, products with "fillers" sorta get an unfairly poor rep around here. Stuff like Meg's "pure polishes", 3M's SMR and IHG, some 1Z polishes, etc. topped with a "heavy" paste wax can do a lot. On "keepers" where I don't want to thin the paint much more, I resist the temptation to "just polish it a *little* more". I'd rather have imperfect original paint than a perfect repaint. Fillers aren't a bad thing in these cases. And even when you have plenty of paint to work with, you're right- life is short and there's other stuff to do besides working the PC for hours on end.
In my experience, the portable fluorescent strips don't show marring well at all. You'd be better off with a regular, old-fashhioned, incandescent trouble light. I use five different light sources for swirl-spotting because as everyone's saying, different light reveals different defects.
One good trick for any kind of lighting is to turn off all the *other* lights. Looking for marring with one light in an otherwise dark garage works great for me.
jvcn- Yeah, products with "fillers" sorta get an unfairly poor rep around here. Stuff like Meg's "pure polishes", 3M's SMR and IHG, some 1Z polishes, etc. topped with a "heavy" paste wax can do a lot. On "keepers" where I don't want to thin the paint much more, I resist the temptation to "just polish it a *little* more". I'd rather have imperfect original paint than a perfect repaint. Fillers aren't a bad thing in these cases. And even when you have plenty of paint to work with, you're right- life is short and there's other stuff to do besides working the PC for hours on end.
Bill D
Hooked For Life
Accumulator said:
Yep, I do this routinely and it's a wonderful technique