Hand Polishing

Give Polished Bliss a shout mate, they're without a doubt the dons in this area & can supply all the kit, they're very helpful & no pressure to buy from them either even though I would.

I wanted a seat cleaner for cat pee on alcantara, dont ask, was vet visit, anyway they advised me about products & who to get from as they didnt have in stock, couldnt get better than that for sure, there work is amazing & customer service second to none in there area of expertise.

To be honest you dont need a 'polisher' if your paints in good nick.

Just some decent applicator pads and some decent microfibres for buffing off.

I'd suggest Dodo Juice Lime Prime followed by a coat of wax. You can spend as much or as little as you want on wax, something like Collinite is good and sub £20. Its very durable too so will last a long time.

Might be worth considering a claybar too. The key to getting a good finsih on your paint is a good surface. A claybar will remove all the crud off your paint that washing doesnt remove and leave it like glass. Slap some polish on top and then a couple of layers of wax and you're laughing.

I'd save the money on the machine and spend it on some quality products to use by hand. Orbitals are alright but a decent one will cost you £100 plus. Only worth it if your paint has quite a few defects on it.

T

Being brutally honest, you have almost no chance of correcting swirl marks and light to moderate defects (fine scratches and etching) on your car by hand (Audi paint is just to hard to be effectively cut back by hand). The best you could hope to achieve making multiple attempts per panel with a light compound like Menzerna 203S in conjunction with Lake Country German CCS Light Cut Pads is around 50% correction, and even this would require a huge amount of time and effort to achieve. Therefore, our advice is to consider alternative options such as glazing or machine polishing. Layering heavy glazes like Blackfire Gloss Enhancing Polish or Poorboys Black Hole Glaze with Lake Country German CCS Polishing Pads can give the illusion of a reasonable level of paint correction for relatively little effort, and this effect will usually last for up to six months at a time if a good quality last step product is used regularly to protect the resulting finish. Investing in a machine polisher makes more sense if a high standard of correction is desired, but considerably more time and money will have to be invested in both products and the learning of new techniques - I would also suggest that buying a really cheap machine would be a mistake, as many do not have the necessary long throw orbit to make them 100% safe for novice use on automotive paint. On the subject of the clay, if you need it well and refold it a few times you should find it works perfectly well still. :icon_thumright: