Help!!!!!!

okay ive seen all the pros and cons of polishing and such thought id give it a try .I went to my unlocal hobby shop and brought d/m 9040 set of micro-mesh and polishing abrasives...im building a dtm warsteiner..painted it pretty good..lil dust and such so i used 4000 grit and sanded whole car..repainted... decent job..took hood/bonnet and used tamiyas fine polish....saw p-mans how to..didnt press hard at all and it seemed to leave lil scatches and whorls..what id do wrong?..im really perplexed? should i continue to polish wont it get worse?.im a laid off chrysler worker who used to work in the paint shop of the jeep grand cherokee plant..we used to sand any imperfection in paint then repaint(sometimes 2-3 times)..used air-jets to blow the sanded particles away..was i supposed to repaint or keep working up thru grits when i sanded with the 4000grit?..i had no-air so i wet then let dry b4 repaint..im trying to achieve a mirror like sheen/shine?. and it just seems really hard.......http://s715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/

Silver...?
What kind of paint?
Its hard to tell what the issue is without seeing the problem.
Are the sanding marks showing from your work before the respray? Its a bad idea to sand or polish metallic paint. That's why we wrap our cars in clear and then polish the lil turds.

There are sort of two camps on painting and polishing.

One is to build up a thick layer of paint, and then sand/polish it out with sequential grades of micromesh. Some people have terrific results this way- but the sanding process is slow, tedious, and horribly painstaking (you have to cover EVERY spot consistently with EVERY grade of abrasive). If you sand through to the primer or plastic (which is nearly inevitable for me) there is no good way to correct, and often the haze of scratches from the initial sanding never really disappears.

The other approach is to apply the paint in many light layers, and sand the paint after each layer. By the final layer, all texture and flaws have been eliminated. It takes 1-2 hours for the paint to outgas after spraying a layer of paint, so this is not a rapid way to paint. But I find it much easier to fix problems this way as they happen. I usually apply a minimum of 4-6 layers of paint, and often go to 8-10. After the paint is opaque I move on to clearcoat, which gets applied the same way. I usually apply 8-12 layers of clearcoat, and gently polish it afterwards with ScratchX.

I tis completely OK to sand metallic paints, as long as you do not sand the final layer. So get all the other layers perfect, and apply a light final mistcoat last of all.

okay i used ts-14......the marks are from after i polished...after the initial sanding and repainting i should have just left it alone....i just decided i could polish it to get a better sheen on car..i might have to take mps advice and just take eight hours to paint..cant seem to upload pics but willkeep working it
http://s715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/th_252.jpghttp://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/233.jpg?t=1241212664
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/248-Copy.jpg?t=1241212699
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/234.jpg?t=1241212741
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/232.jpg?t=1241212791
pics of body...... hood iz b4 polishing more to follow:

The finish in the pics is shiny but not smooth. It stilll has a lot of paint texture.

I personally think all those steps needed with MicroMesh are unnecessary and time-consuming. Your experience is common: as you work your way through the grits, you see only a smooth dull finish. Then, when you get down to the finest grits, deep scratches suddenly appear. Aaaargh. So it's back up to a coarser grit and all the way back down again.

If your final coat (base or clear) has orange peel or paint texture, wet-sanding with 2000 grit wet-or-dry will smooth it out. Based on your photos, I think that's what your car needs now. After a 2000-grit wet-sanding, you don't need to go to any finer grits, because Tamiya Coarse compound will remove the 2000-grit scratch pattern and produce a a nice polish - not high gloss, but just right for "original" older cars.

Tamiya Coarse is actually not coarse at all. You won't see any scratches, deep or otherwise.

If you want a glossy finish - most of us do - Tamiya Fine is the next step. And if you want a deep, show-car gloss, use Tamiya Finish as your final step.

Ddms

Hey didy how are you buddy..so lemme get this straight..based on mypics i should wet or dry sand with 2000 grit and then use polish....
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/019.jpg?t=1241224744
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/guiwee/248-Copy-1.jpg?t=1241225021
1st pic is after polish...2nd pic is b4 polish

Two issues that could be a problem beyond other input you've gotten so far:

1. You are not applying enough pressure to buff out. If you don't get enough friction to create a bit of heat, it won't buff very nicely. There's a fine line between getting the right friction to buff out nicely, and going too far and buffing through edges. Practice, practice, practice. Expect to have to do repairs while you learn. Use strips of Tamiya tape to protect edges as you polish panels w/sharp creases.

2. Your polishing cloth might be too coarse or have dirt/residue trapped in it that's also causing scratches, not polishing them out. You want the softest cloth possible. I have some that I bought for car detailing, very soft, they replaced an old flannel shirt I used for about 20 years before it was completely broken down. Modern flannel seems too coarse. I've heard some people like using synthetic chamois cloths to buff paint with.

Black is a difficult enough color. You want it to be pretty smooth before buffing it out; if it's got a lot of orange peel it's best to wetsand w/2000 grit (or 2400 grit Micromesh and respray. Looking at your photos, that's what I'd do if it were my model. Every time you wetsand and recoat, your subsequent coats will be smoother.

I love Tamiya's buffing compounds, I usually use 2400/3600/4000 micromesh and then use Tamiya coarse/fine/finish. But black seems to want more, so I go through at least 8000 grit. It's not going to hurt going past 2000 grit and worry over deeper scratches, they'd still be there if you started w/Tamiya coarse on 2000 grit sanded, or if it's 8000 grit. Or 12000 grit. The higher the grit, the faster it goes. You do the most sanding with the lower number, your first wetsanding coat is the most important, the next two you'll notice are doing more polishing than sanding. Everyone has a different method that works for them. Tamiya black looks fantastic when buffed to a high shine. It looks best without any clear. Clear will tend to make it look less black.

After using the fine polish try using Novus #1 it is very watery and will remove the finest scratches. To get heavy orange peel out without sanding try Simichrome Polish, it's sold at most Harley-Davidson dealers. Then go to finer polishes. Also Meguiar's has a vast range of polishes that work very well. What I have discovered over the years is that different paints work better with different polishes, so having allot of different polishes does help. Darker colors do show the finest of scratches the easiest.

thanks for all of your input guys i appreciate it..first off let me start by saying that i only polished the hood and nothing else...too late to do anything else to model as i allready glued body to chassis but i will file it away for future reference...also when i painted it it was a glass smooth i was hoping it would dry like that but it didnt..isnt that a lot of paint if you have to resand between coats? when the paint dried it left a little texture which disappointed me...i dont understand the orange peel as i was very close to model when painting with my spraycan so close in fact i had to stop because i didnt want it to run... once again thanks for your input guys i will post some completed pics when im done with decals and such...

thanks for all of your input guys i appreciate it..first off let me start by saying that i only polished the hood and nothing else...too late to do anything else to model as i allready glued body to chassis but i will file it away for future reference...also when i painted it it was a glass smooth i was hoping it would dry like that but it didnt..isnt that a lot of paint if you have to resand between coats? when the paint dried it left a little texture which disappointed me...i dont understand the orange peel as i was very close to model when painting with my spraycan so close in fact i had to stop because i didnt want it to run... once again thanks for your input guys i will post some completed pics when im done with decals and such...

Tamiya TS paints shrink down a lot between wet and dry, you cannot tell what it's going to look like dried vs. wet. If there is any texture to a primer coat, it will show through the TS paint. If you want a shiny, smooth coat of TS, you want your primer to be as smooth as possible (I wetsand primer with 2400 grit Micromesh). TS shot over bare plastic (that has been cleaned properly) yields incredibly smooth results. If you shoot it and it dries w/orange peel, wetsanding and applying more TS will help immensely. TS shrinks down so much that you can shoot a lot of it on a model before it's going to get too thick. I airbrush most TS paints for even thinner coats.

Yep, what they all said. In the second last shot of the hood, in the edges of the bright patch at the bottom, you can clearly see orange peel. The reason you start sanding with something coarse (mesh or compound) is to get rid of that texture. You have to get rid of it - do not stop sanding or move onto the next grade until it is gone, subsequent grades are only to clean up after the last one, they are not for removing the initial texture. Only press as lightly as is necessary to get rid of it though (this takes skill and practice), but get rid of it you must, Anything like that will be a horror show in the final polished finish. As you cut and polish, look at it carefully under a very bright light so you can see what's happening. You'll soon get the hang of it. And as was said, you need to generate a bit of heat to get a perfect polish, so don't be afraid to glide over the surface fairly rapidly, also switch to a clean part of the cloth as soon as you see heavy residue on the rag (very light residue is ok, it even helps the polishing I think), that is paint which you don't want to be dragging around the surface.

ok. once again thanks guys ...ive seen some of the work that everyone who responded to my post,therefore i must listen and learn as all of you guys are at a level i hope to achieve one day..that being said heres what im gonna do .ive finished entire car except for hood/bonnett?..i will wet sand it with 2000 grit repaint and go from there..stay tuned..in fact ill go do it now.ill post some pics of it tomorrow