Farecla Profile Products.

Benco

Benco

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Hi all,

I'm in the process of removing faded decals from a black hull and need to cut and polish. I've come across the farecla profile products which read well but wondered if anyone had any experience?

I'm thinking of starting with the profile 300 then the 500 and finishing with the profile UV wax.

The hull isn't horrendously flat but it is noticeably different to where the decals were.

Any help/advice/recommendations would be great.
 
You will be inundated with opinions, but the professional on the forum "Marine Reflections" uses the 3M products and I personally have achieved very good results with these in the past. However, I have now switched to the Gtechnic range, which is a "nano polish" and I am getting excellent results; a different technology, but it's well worth a try.
 
Ok, talk to me about 'nano polish', what is the difference?

I've seen products claiming to be 'single step' polish but I can't see how that could give you the same result as using a 2/3 step system.
 
I cannot say I understand how it works, I would suggest you look at the Gtechnic website. It's much finer than a normal cutting compound but certainly takes the chalkiness out of my dark blue hull. It's a two stage process, after polishing, you have to spray on and buff up another product which contains the UV protection.
 
Would you mind telling which gtechnic products you are using.
I did my dads boat last year and he had G3 and an autoglym polish, it looks good but it is white.
As the hull on our boat is black I want to make sure I get it right.
 
They all work to a degree, Farecla, 3M, Gtechnic and many more, but the results I'm afraid aren't in a bottle. There's more to it as I'm sure you are already aware.

It is like me asking which scissors would offer the best haircut, or what set of golf clubs would allow me to beat Tiger Woods.

You can achieve very good results with any brand, the better the technique the longer the results will last.

It's taken me 30 years to get a general grip on the subject, but I am honestly still learning.

A black hull should be treated the same as a white one but the black will show up errors easier to the naked eye.

As with any polishing you need a clean (naked) surface to start with, free from wax / water spots, or other 'above surface' contaminates. A cutting pass that will reach the base of any correction required, then followed with progressively finer grades of product before protection.
Each product has it's own pad or applicator that it would work well with, along with consideration to working speed, residue build up (dead gel coat mixed with product), workability or how quickly the product dries whilst working, of course the ingredients and their long term effects on gel coat and there are many more traits that make up a decent product.

3M works well for me, but there may well be products out there that can sing better on an individual task, personally I no longer look into it as the 3M system works very well, any tiny changes in product make-up have little effect on the overall results.

After buying hundreds of products, evaluating new ones on behalf of manufacturers and trying them all with various pads at different speeds and so on, I revert back to the faithful 3M.

Tony
 
Thanks for the reply. Like you say, it's about finding products that work for you, same as anything really.
Do you use foam pads or lambs wool? I've always used foam in the past on previous cars and my dads boat. Is any advantage of using one or the other?
 
This thread from a couple of years ago may be of interest:
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?378455-Compunding-and-polishing-help

The summary is that what worked best for me was pretty much following Marine Reflections's excellent advice (for which I remain very grateful). I didn't have much joy with foam heads. The Farecla products I had previously been using were an older range (certainly the containers of the profile range look different). They were OK but I liked the 3M better (more details in above thread).
 
Marine reflections guided me to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke5kfYz9Ybw.
As he said, it's the work you want to put into it. he first year I spent oodles, and a lot of time bringing back the faded hull on my new to me Westerly, using 3M products as the video.
I started at the imperial compound stage, worked up to a finishing glaze then put on 3 coats of wax, and at the end of the season, on a swing mooring it comes out looking nearly as good as when it went in.
Now each year I just wash down and clean using oxalic acid, after which I buff up with a finishing glaze, and finally wax. I now use Farcela UV wax and find it very good.View attachment 52451View attachment 52452
 
I'm prepared to be corrected, but I understood polishing compound is designed to break down into a finer and finer compound as you polish. Once you've polished one area, don't re-load the polisher with fresh polish and re-do the area, as the compound will be coarser and you'll be going back a stage then getting back to where you were. If you have any marks that are visible before you polish, you should really flat them out with wet and dry first.

I've used Farecla and thought it was pretty good.
 
ronsurf said:
I'm prepared to be corrected, but I understood polishing compound is designed to break down into a finer and finer compound as you polish. Once you've polished one area, don't re-load the polisher with fresh polish and re-do the area, as the compound will be coarser and you'll be going back a stage then getting back to where you were. If you have any marks that are visible before you polish, you should really flat them out with wet and dry first.

I've used Farecla and thought it was pretty good.
Click to expand...

Yes and no because you would still be working the area to the point of all product being worked to a gloss as you did on the first pass, so you wouldn't be going back a step, if anything you would be going forward.
Most don't spend enough time working the first pass (through fear of burning or going through) and the surface isn't ready for the next stage, so a double pass (of course depending on severity of oxidation) is usually a good idea, as is wiping the oils off from the first pass with acetone or IPA to check if you have corrected the surface and by how much rather than just wetted it with the oils.



Compounds are basically aluminium oxide carried via distillates (mineral oils) and various other ingredients that either make it more or less likely to fling. They can be likened to a liquid/gel sandpaper, with particle size of the oxide determining how coarse the product and what depth it will correct to with each pass.
This is also dependant on what pad you use to work the area and also working face speed.

One thing that separates the wheat from the chaff is the consistency of the particle size just as it is with wet & dry paper.

If you have say a 1200 grit sheet of wet & dry it means that 1200 particles will fit into a square inch, so each particle that is on the paper can be classed as 1200.
If just one particle has slipped through the grading system and is say 800 in size, then when it comes to correcting an area that has had a pass of said '1200' you would be left with marks from a single 800 particle.
For this reason you can spend a fair bit more on a sheet of assured particle size paper than the normal cheap ones. Example - Trizact 3000 foam backed discs box of 15 for £70.14

The same is true of compounds, if I am working an area with a compound that is of a certain grade, I know full well that it would need further stages to recover from this.
If the particle size was hit and miss, then the next stage of finer polishing might not correct all that the previous stage had created.

The other quality is fling. Some products require adding additional water to lubricate the product and enable more workability before the product dries, certainly in hot weather. This can create a right royal mess, as the water mixed with the product spins off the polishing head at great speed, removing the spotting from a nearby 'spitter' is no fun.

There's an awful lot more when you drill down into it,.
I guess I am guilty of being brand loyal to 3M, but the truth is they are all very similar unless you have the time to compare the many, many products and systems and would notice the subtle differences.

For me I'm happy with what works 'for me', but what product works for me quite possibly might as well be a donkey turd for someone else, due to the system they are using, the pads, the condition of the surface and so on.

Laika, Thanks :encouragement:

Richard,
Yes, the Gtechnic system is more within the finer stages of polishing and geared around protection. Now you have worked it to a stage of being 'correct' it's simply a case of not allowing the surfaces to slip back. For this Gtechnic are very good, more of a hydrophobic protective sealer based system, than a wax based system.

Krew 2,
Think you are being a bit modest in allowing the UV protection to take the credit for your hard work! It is the surfaces condition that is performing and making the UV wax perform. :)

Benco,
Yes I think you would be fine with the 300, then 500 followed by the wax if that is what you think will yield the results. I would try a small area first with just the 500 and see what that corrects if anything, you may be able to skip the 300 if you work the 500 for that little bit longer. Wipe down with IPA and evaluate as you go. Plus, check that you can recover back to full clarity easily with the 500 from the 300 pass.

Tony
 
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