I am always reading posts about how people are not getting the results they are looking for when polishing and one of the most common mistakes people make is the amount of product they are using per working area.
Polishes are made up of micro abrasives that are designed to even out the dips and valleys of your clear coat. When you apply more product than needed, the abrasives in the polish never fully get broken down. When the abrasives don’t completely get broken down, you can be left with marring in your paint since you stopped polishing when the abrasives were not at an ideal size.
The more product you apply, the longer you have to work the polish into the paint to properly break it down. Some polishes do not have long work times and it can turn into a dusty mess or make removal of product a chore.
A general rule of thumb to follow when it comes to the proper amount of polish to use is somewhere between 3 to 4 pea sized drops for a working area no larger than 18″ x 18″. An entire coat of polish on a mid sized vehicle should take around 1.5 ounces of product to complete. In the photo below, I am using Menzerna PO203S as an example. A few products that would be exceptions to this rule would be Meguiars M105/M205 because they are non-diminishing abrasives.
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