Shepherd’s
Scratch Repair
What is a scratch?
A scratch can occur in many ways and on a vehicle there are levels of severity each accident could range in. But in sum a scratch is an imperfection on a cosmetic surface that was suffered from contact of another object
How bad can a scratch be?
Besides cosmetics there can also be structural damage to the surrounding paint, breaking it down there are about 3 simple severities of scratches. The surface level usually only on the clear coat and can be repaired with a polisher or light sanding. Then past that first layer you might have to involve adding layers of clear coat and base coat to fill in a gouge. A scratch gone completely through all paint layers to the actually panel requires an extensive repair
Different types of scratches?
Even passed the severities of scratches we can break them down into different types. The lightest and most common being swirling, then the traditional scratch and further in we can include damage like keyed paint or even rock chips
Lets show you what its about
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Before
This image illustrates the perfect example of essentially the 3 major scratch types in one spot. On the top left we can catch a hint of swirling that is easier to notice on darker colored vehicles. In the zoomed in area we find a deep gouge revealing the base panel underneath the paint, in this case the rear bumper made of a black plastic. Right below that we see these lighter colored gray stripes that appear to have suffered the least amount of damage from the impact
After
With a single pass of a DA polisher we were able to remove over 90% of the swirling and the gray striping that was on the surface of the clear coat. We were also able to remove the damage surrounding the gouges leaving a prepped surface for paint fill in and leveling