Have a couple miner scratches. Is their a product that's better than others

 

it's a bit like that children's book...."If you give a mouse a cookie...."

When you correct a surface, you are going to do so by either manually or mechanically applying an abrasive cream or polish to the surface with an application pad. Prior to correcting or leveling a clear coat, you need to check for imbedded particulates on the surface of the clear coat. If you polish the surface without first removing these particulates, you risk pulling them out or breaking off the the tips of those imbedded particulates and then dragging them over the surface while correcting.

Before correcting you can first test the surface to see if it needs to be clay barred in order to remove embedded particulates. You don't always need to clay bar and you want to avoid doing so if it's not necessary. The reason being, clay barring itself mars the surface. The clay itself as well as the particulates it picks up will damage the clear coat. The reason you clay bar is because the damage it does will be less than the damage you will do by polishing a surface that is covered in imbedded particulates. You can test the surface after you've properly washed and decontaminated the surface using a very thin sandwich bag, not the ziplock kind, but the really thin cheap foldable kind. Put your hand in one and run it over the surface. It will either be smooth or you'll feel the surface of the baggie pulling on the particulates. Before you test you need to decontaminate the surface.

You decontaminate after you've properly washed the surface. I use two products for this surface. An iron remover and a tar remover. These will dissolve contaminants on the surface of the paint. The iron removers can be cool to use as you'll see evidence of it dissolving iron appear as little purple streaks on the surface. You should always decontaminate after a wash, but you may not need to clay bar after you decontaminate.

Before you decontaminate, you need to properly wash the surface. I can't say enough good things about CarPro's Reset Intensive Car Wash. It is a top shelf wash, not for every day use, but a good wash to use if you are digging in and you're going to do some polishing. There are many other options.

Once you wash, decontaminate, and possibly clay bar the surface you are ready to start correcting the surface. Getting to your question. There are types of products that are better than others.

I'd pick a polish or cream with diminishing abrasive technology. There are small chunks of actual solids in these and some are designed to "cut" once, but then break into a smaller piece afterward. The more you work it, the more the abrasives break down. What this means is that there will be less of a chance of you overworking the surface with an abrasive. This won't matter as much if you polish by hand, but I'd still stick with a diminishing abrasive. I use Wolfgang products and love them. You can use their Total Swirl remover and their Finishing glaze by hand. As for an applicator, use a foam pad style applicator.

A really great 'starter' machine will cost about $150. You will get a way better result with a machine.

Once you correct the surface and get the result you want, put a wax, sealant or coating of your choice on the paint. Be sure to prep the surface before you apply a last stage product. Lots of prep chems that work great for this.

 

I just bought a 2010 limited and I thought the bike was just dirty and it would clean up after I washed it but it didn’t.What I noticed was all the imperfections.Swirling and what I call fingernail scratches.Boot marks on top of the saddle bags and the paint didn’t sparkle at all.So the good news is every imperfection wasn’t deeper than the clear coat.Thats the good news.So I bought some Maguiar’s ultimate compound and some applicators. I did it by hand to see how it was going to work and to my surprise it worked very well.So I got really brave and bought a buffing kit you can use on a drill and a did all the paint on the bike.All swirl marks and minor scratches or gone.Then I used Maguiar’s polish which has some abrasives in it but not much.It got a little better.Then I used turtle wax hard shell at the end.The paint sparkles in the sun and it looks really nice and I’m happy. I’m sure I could have gotten more aggressive but it was my first time and I’m nervous and ruining the paint so maybe next year I’ll get after it a little harder.
One thing I learned was different compounds are more abrasive then others.I use products that say,Clear coat safe.

 

If you can feel the scratch with a finger nail I doubt it can be polished out.

Realise of course that you are removing clear coat to remove swirls and scratches. At some point you will go through the clear coat and then a respray will be required.

For metal there is cheap paint thickness gauges that give a total thickness. There is some eye-wateringly expensive depth gauges that works on other mediums and can give a thickness figure for the different layers of paint and clear coat.

I would not go gung-ho on a metal surface if the scratches look deep.

 

I'll go after a deep scratch with a heavy hitter like Wolfgang's Uber Compound and a hard cutting pad, but the amount of clear coat is indeed finite. You can still improve the look of the scratch, even if you can't completely level it out.