Using a DA for wetstanding. What to expect?

B

BoostedOne

So my girlfriend got me an awesome gift a while ago, a Hutchins Waterbug. Its your normal Hutchins DA with a water hose run to it specifically for wetsanding. I hinted heavily about this thing to her when I wanted it because I HATE the wetsanding and buffing process...

I am finally about to use it, ironically on her car. I am wondering what to expect over hand block wetsanding. I bought 1000, 1500, and 2000 paper from my local supplier. One thing I was under the assumption of, is it would cut fast. The guy said not really. For a given grit, it will be more forgiving than the same grit by hand.
The other thing he mentioned was being careful of getting trash under the paper, something I didnt think about until he said it. Hand sanding, you can hear it if you are paying attention.

So, for those who use them for wetsanding the clear, what tips do you have?

I use a rotary buffer with a wool pad and 105 followed by a foam pad and 205 typically. Used 3m perfect it in 3 stages on the last car and wasnt overly impressed.
 
I played with it a small amount, using a DA for wetsanding. You can still put "waves" into it if you hammer on one spot for a while. You also can sand until scratches are gone, but not get the paint perfectly flat.

I would still do the first step by hand with a hard block to get it flat, then use the DA to remove sanding scratches and speed the time up.
 
There is a ton of videos on YouTube. Make sure you get an interface pad. I have the same DA but I don't use the water feature. I just use a spray bottle. Dirt can get picked up from the water bucket when you use the water feature. At least that was my experience.

Don
 
I used an oak block for the first cut then the DA with the interface pad with 2000 and 3000 using a hose with a filter on it. Continuous stream of water flushing it.
 
First off the Sales Guy is full of crap. No machine is safer than doing it by hand. It may give a better finish (more uniform scratches) but you can do more damage with it if you don't know what you are doing. Color sanding I only use a DA when I'm using Trizact. (3000 & 5000). Unless you have a lot of experience it's going to be much better and safer to hand block then Trizact (or equivalent) using a DA. In theory the Waterbug sounds great, in reality its cumbersome and not really any better than doing it by hand with a block. Cumbersome because you have a siphon hose and your air hose your dragging around trying to keep out of the work area. Known lots of guys over the years buy one and use it a few times then go back to doing it by hand.
 
yeah i have never liked doing the coarser grits wet. i always do my 1000-1500 grits with dry finish film. you can see what you are doing when its done dry. i always end up with more pigtail when i do the sanding wet. my wetsanding is also done with just a spray bottle. no need to flood the surface with water when using trizact or the bufflex system.

to the op. you do know that 105 compound is 3m perfect-it compound with more fillers added to it and put in a different bottle? 105 seems like it cuts faster but its just filling the scratches an they will return later.
 
Wow, alot of things I never considered, or knew about. Long story short, I've had it since Christmas 2016, but for a few reasons just started painting again this year. Didnt have an oppurtunity to use the water bug on the first car since I was just helping the owner out, and because of all his internet reading he was hell bent on handsanding everything.. More power to him as long as I dont have to do it, haha. Only downside is it took so long and it finally left early this month or late last month. I did a hood, but thats not big enough to bother with it. So the water bug hasnt even been out of the box in so long I forget what it looks like.

First, I assumed the hose on the water bug went to a water hose since the end is so big. Considering how relatively short the hose is, I can almost see it being a pain in the ass if it has to siphon feed from a bucket.

Second, I wouldnt plan on sitting and laying on any particular spot. Typically what I need to get out is some minor dust or a gnat, and slight orange peel. I spray the SPI Universal Clear whenever I can, which sands relatively easy as well, so I would imagine I would be moving pretty fast.

Third, the guy at the paint store didnt say the DA was safer than hand. He just said my assumption that it would be more aggressive than the equivalent grit by hand was incorrect.

Fourth, I will have to look into the whole wetsanding/dry sanding/DA/hand sanding thing more. In looking this up, I was amazed to see people talking about dry sanding the clear. Not by any stretch suggesting it is wrong, I just never heard of it or thought about it, whether by hand or on a DA. The last time I had any formal training on body work, 1500 was considered super fine paper, and the go to compounds was liquid ebony and imperial machine glaze.

So 5th, no I didnt know about 105 and its similarity to the 3M. I just started getting back into the paint and body side of things about 5 years ago, and the first few I didnt even bother to buff. So when I did set out to get compound I was a bit overwhelmed at the products out there. The vehicle I bought the first batch of 105/205 for was done back in 2015, maybe 2014. It seemed to work well, so I stuck with it. The car I used the 3M on was where I was helping the guy out. He bought all the compounds and 3M pads. When I say I wasnt impressed by it I wasnt saying it didnt work, it worked fine. It just seemed like it didnt do any better than the 205. Like it was 3 steps to get the same thing as 105/205 does in two steps. Never looked at them with a microscope but saw a few cars I did back in 2014/2015 recently and didn't notice scratches on them.
 
I guess i also need to look into what these interface pads are that are being referred to.
 
Cool thanks. I probably need to get an order in with them anyway, will add it to the list.
 
Well, that was an interesting experience. The waterbug came with an interface pad, so that was cool. I started using it wet, and adding the few drops of detergent like the instructions said and ended up with a car wash going on. Got rid of the detergent, and yeah. Definitely a lot harder to tell whats going on with a big sheet of water on the panel. Tuning in the water flow on the water bug will definitely take some practice.
So I ended up turning the water needle completely closed and going over the entire car dry with 1000 to get the texture and a few oops's out.
On the trunk, I did 1500 and 2000 wet on the water bug, then hit it with the compound on a section to see what happened. Some spots came out ok, some spots I didnt sand enough.
I ended up just doing the 1500 and 2000 by hand on a block. Doing the 1000 dry on the DA still did save some time..

I will play with it a little more next time, under better conditions. The weather has sucked, rainy and overcast so with better light maybe I will be able to see a little better. I dont want to do this work in the booth because it reaches 95 degrees in there quite easily with the doors closed. Bugs are so bad where I live I leave the doors open as little as possible.
 
Not familiar with the waterbug or what pads you have for it, but the only da wet sanding I ever did that I'd call successful were the festool 3000 & 4000 grit pads. They are a mesh sort of fabric on top of 1/4" black foam, which makes it soft & helps it stay wet for a bit without adding water & was resistant to grinding trash in. But even so I've only used it for safely making an improvement on thin factory clearcoat , not going for the perfectly flat show finish you do on something that you yourself sprayed. Some other da pad system {red & black box} with wetting lube I once tried was nothing but pigtail city & finally went in the trash.
Everybody will have their own methods for things, but for the prefect show paint it's hard to dispute at least starting out by by hand for best flattening effect & control & using da only for the finer grits. Only used the trizact pads a few times in spots, but it's also hard to dispute seeing what the hell you're doing.
If you do a bit of reading previous threads on this site, you'll see a bit of discussions on better buffing compounds without the added fillers that the 3-m owned meguiars stuff is so full of. Also if you want to see that your final buff doesn't have scratches hid by fillers, wipe it with w&g remover.
 
I find a electric random orbital sander/polisher at about half speed
with 1500/2000 grit finishing film (dry) works best for me
I go back over that with 3000 grit abralon pads.
It's fast and pretty safe.
The key is using the slower speeds which keeps the paper from loading up.
I like the 3M purple discs.
 
Hadnt been ignoring the thread I started, appreciate the input guys. This b****h named Irma decided to come into my life and literally the day I made my last post was the last day I did any car related work, other than 4 days of frantically trying to make my workshop area as ready as possible for the 140mph winds they were warning of. I haven't went back home yet, but I probably have a week of unpacking everything before I can even work again! Everything of value of could become a projectile was moved from my relatively rickety shop to my garage.

Anyhow, yes, I need to do some more reading and practicing. The 1000 dry, I cant say I really had a problem at all with it. I had a couple of runs in the A or C pillars which are very curvy on this car and the DA knocked them out perfectly. Unfortunately I knocked thru the clear and base on a couple of edges that I knew I shouldn't have attempted to do, but such is life. Its just my girlfriends daily and the project is WAY behind schedule at this point so for now she will just have to live with it.
The discs I have are the 3M purples.

I actually did go back to the 3M perfect it system on this car(roof is only thing buffed at this point though).. My wool pad was getting tired, and I was tired of the fuzz all over the place. And since its been a while since I used my other foam pads(and I didnt seal them up) mud dobbers got into them and basically ruined them. So just said screw it for now and went back to the Perfect it system..
 
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