While I've mentioned I personally would never ever attempt it at my skill level, here's proof that wet sanding the orage out on a factory paint job can be done. Not to kick a dead horse, but please take note this cat know's what he's doing; this was not some weekend warrior posting up his project from the weekend! This has to be the biggest success story of such out there...not to mention the most beautiful paint job I've ever seen! A testament that the Ford orange peel is in the surface...

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...da-system.html

 

It's an extremely fine line. Wool is downright dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and heat is not your friend either. I'd personally argue heat is more dangerous than wool. Look at the techlnology going into foam pads to help them run as cool as possible! With the foam technology out there, wool is only needed for the worst of correction jobs...IMO. The proble with novice and beginner detailers and/or folks wanting to tackle their own paint correction jobs is they want to jump straight to the most aggressive stuff out there; using the most aggressive product on the most aggressive pad is NOT where you start.

 

to much Heat generated by to much applied pressure and speed in the same deet dee dee spot. I good DA with variable speed and 30+ years of experience. I'm old school clean up with wool and fine polish with terry cloth. wax with micro fiber.

 

as an fyi......
an old school technique that can reduce the orange peel effect (and other minor imperfections)....is to give the paint a bath in ice water.....
This also typically works on fresh paint but, it in essence makes the paint shrink, reducing the size of "imperfections"...again, this is very old school back from the days of lacquer but I have used this on urethanes & laytex.

 

That sand job is cool and all, but I don't know how many people want to pay for 40 man hours of sanding, only to result in thinner clear coat

 

Although I will not argue that the results shared in that post are quite nice, I doubt very much I would ever do that to one of my own (or even a customer) vehicle. Why? I don't care what he says, but there was simply way too much clearcoat removed during the process. Yes, he did state how much clear he thought he was removing, but with orange peel, it's very tough to get a true reading of paint thickness. And as bad as the factory paint was, it was applied at a relatively even thickness. After all of the sanding and polishing, what do you think that car has now?

Clint Eastwood (as Dirty Harry) probably summed it up best when he said, "So kid, you feeling lucky?"

 

Not many...but that guy did and that's all that matters. I would. Not for my daily driver truck, but for that thing sitting in the garage to have those results...yes, yes I would! Everyone has priorities.

While I don't disagree with a single thing you said, I would however argue that the average owner of that vehicle is not driving it daily. It probably gets washed/polised/waxed 1/4th as much as the next deail enthusiast would do to a normally used vehicle. The odds of further care blowing through the remaining clearcoat are proably remote.

 

In order for me to feel comfortable having that done, I'd want extra layers of clear sprayed on top. THEN he can go to town doing his thing with sanding stuff to make my ride look awesome.

 

That was the one thing that struck me as strange, he never put a paint gauge on it to actually know.
- Not shocking for the A site, a lot of supposition and guessing going on over there.

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner ( I know big shock ) unless he marked where to check all those high points, he now has thinner clear where they were, and thicker in other areas.

Again how much ?
" just nipped off the peaks "
- How much is a "nip" again ? I could not find a conversion to mm for that

 

Other order, sand it down ( and figure out where the OP is at ) then after fixing it, start laying paint/clear back on.

You cannot fill in OP with more clear
- Need to sand down what is there to get the next coat to stick to it.

No matter how bad you might think it looks, the factory paint job is better than what any shop is going to do durability wise.
Guessing someone won't eat up the remainder of the clear is just that, guess work.
- Does not matter, he has his money and down the road he goes. When the owner or next owner finds out it will be too late.

Only takes 1 rock chip in one of the many thin sections to start a clear coat peel.
Seen it many times, the SIL's 2002 Mustang has a door that is still factory, and the clown that did the job, went to town to make it match the SS paint over match ground the snot out of it.
1 rock chip in it, now she has a peel about the size of a silver dollar, good bye Ford red, hello pink driver's door.

 

Ah, but therein lies the real problem. Most of the UV protection in clearcoat is actually in the outmost layer. Guess what part was wet sanded off? I'd agree with Steve in that the owner of that beautiful car will very likely experience all sorts of clearcoat failure related issues shortly down the road.

Well, at least it was great looking for a little while.