Minor Scratches

[Bernard Foy]

I wonder if anyone has tried to eliminate minor scratches from the paintwork using toothpaste??

[TonyHSD]

Hi, 

toothpaste should really only be used for its purpose, to clean teeth. 
For minor scratches like from daily use and regular car washes best thing to do is simple hand wax or polish. Do a good car wash by yourself. Dry the car with soft microfibre cloth. Treat the paintwork with car wax. If any deeper scratches are presented you can do by hand again with t cut compound like 3M green cap. 

[Bernard Foy]

5 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

Hi, 

toothpaste should really only be used for its purpose, to clean teeth. 
For minor scratches like from daily use and regular car washes best thing to do is simple hand wax or polish. Do a good car wash by yourself. Dry the car with soft microfibre cloth. Treat the paintwork with car wax. If any deeper scratches are presented you can do by hand again with t cut compound like 3M green cap. 

Yes Tony I am aware of all that, I was just thinking out loud 😃👍

[sonyny]

try Meguiars Ultimate Compound

[152bobby]

Gentle rubbing with T Cut from Halfords.

[bathtub tom]

2 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

Hi, 

toothpaste should really only be used for its purpose, to clean teeth. 
For minor scratches like from daily use and regular car washes best thing to do is simple hand wax or polish. Do a good car wash by yourself. Dry the car with soft microfibre cloth. Treat the paintwork with car wax. If any deeper scratches are presented you can do by hand again with t cut compound like 3M green cap. 

Wax won't remove scratches, It'll just fill them with wax! Polish is an abrasive, wax is a coating.

If you can feel the scratch with a fingernail,it won't polish out. There's all sorts of grades of cutting compound, some can be quite harsh!

[donkeychomp]

Is the T in T Cut short for toothpaste? 😊

Alex

[152bobby]

Just now, donkeychomp said:

Is the T in T Cut short for toothpaste? 😊

Alex

Sure is, but excellent stuff when used properly 👍

[bathtub tom]

1 hour ago, 152bobby said:

Sure is, but excellent stuff when used properly 👍

Have you tried it, tastes foul!

[Bemused2]

I use Turtle Wax intensive care glass polish. Works and in addition is great for cleaning the windscreen etc.

[Cyker]

I do wonder if that stuff they invented to fill in scratches on CDs, as seen on tomorrows world decades ago, would work on cars... the other tricky part is finding somewhere to buy that stuff!!  

[Paul john]

19 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I do wonder if that stuff they invented to fill in scratches on CDs, as seen on tomorrows world decades ago, would work on cars... the other tricky part is finding somewhere to buy that stuff!!  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-DVD-Repair-Cleaning-Kit/dp/B0013IPAJY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=303NR9F4M1OFS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XpQSxAmyS_jjNR1hNpW-qaQE5xTp13d6mwkrncaAS_mc3tM93wdk2Z_4b991YJzncETLLK-MQ4bZcpazcPFQUEg5pT0aZnGsf5VTmbR1AGeS8f1vLz-PvNkenn0uD1TEjKd8JWS74Zk2NOXt8nT14g.1PSBVfXBl0CQzv8nNT7FT5Qrb7Nf0ZJEJ45IwjxkmV4&dib_tag=se&keywords=Cd+renovator&qid=1719611622&rdc=1&sprefix=cd+renovator%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
 

[Cyker]

Nah it wasn't like that; You could just pour it on the scratch and wipe it off; No polishing or cutting compound required.

I've not seen it sold anywhere for several decades, suspect it didn't sell well as it was ridiculously expensive.

Nowadays 99.999% of CD scratch repair kits are just overpriced polishing kits.

[MikeSh]

2 hours ago, Cyker said:

99.999% of CD scratch repair kits

I'm old ... but even for me CDs are a distant memory 🙂 

Blu-ray or bust baby 🤪

[Cyker]

Fine replace "CD" with "Polycarbonate data disc" you pedantic git!!   

[MikeSh]

3 hours ago, Cyker said:

you pedantic git!!

You are too kind sir 🙂

But seriously, I wonder if such kits could work on a BluRay disc? They are much 'finer' resolution than CDs (blue light rather than red) and some are multi-layered. If they are polishing kits the micro-scratches they make might be worse than leaving it alone.

[Cyker]

2 hours ago, MikeSh said:

You are too kind sir 🙂

But seriously, I wonder if such kits could work on a BluRay disc? They are much 'finer' resolution than CDs (blue light rather than red) and some are multi-layered. If they are polishing kits the micro-scratches they make might be worse than leaving it alone.

Meant purely in jest I assure you!  

I find the error correction codes in blu-rays make them very resilient to scratch damage unless the reflective layer is somehow damaged, but the stuff I was talking about was designed to be optically identical to the polycarbonate most optical media is made out of, and would be indistinguishable once it filled in the scratch.

Irritatingly I can't find any reference to it anywhere (It doesn't help that I can't remember what it's called!!).

Everything else that comes up are just polishing kits of varying quality and expense...

 

I must admit I was hoping we'd have holographic discs or some sort of optical wafer memory cards by now, but I'm still stuck with hard disks for long-term digital bulk storage!   Unfortunately I found out the hard way that flash media is not great for long term archival storage as it seems prone to random bit flips the longer it's unused...!

 

[MikeSh]

2 hours ago, Cyker said:

I must admit I was hoping we'd have holographic discs or some sort of optical wafer memory cards by now, but I'm still stuck with hard disks for long-term digital bulk storage!   Unfortunately I found out the hard way that flash media is not great for long term archival storage as it seems prone to random bit flips the longer it's unused...!

I used to backup to CDs (still got a couple in the firesafe I think) but they degrade. I gave up some years back and now pay for cloud backup which, once set up, just happens continuously in the background and degradation is someone else's problem. 

I'm really not sure much of it is actually worth keeping, but at least if a device dies suddenly we can recover most of anything we want and replacing a device and syncing the new one is also fairly easy.