Polishing clay?

[doctorwho]

My first thought when I saw the title of the thread was, "Why would someone want to polish clay?"

[teb]

I can never remember my wife's names day - and get in trouble for it every year (Latvians celebrate a certain day of the year for each common first name - kind of like having an extra birthday). In my defense, I usually reply with something like "Welcome to America. Here, have a Pop Tart". I still get a pretty healthy dose of the language though, these days via Skype. It sure beats the old days when we were paying the phone companies $2 per minute or better for her to talk to her family, and the Skype sound quality is incredible. Her mom doesn't speak English and I don't speak Latvian, so when we bring her over to visit it's pretty interesting. We've developed a crude, but workable form of communication. The dog seems to understand her just fine though. Go figure.

[jingle_jangle]

My first thought when I saw the title of the thread was, "Why would someone want to polish clay?"

The wax loonies are all over this stuff, and have been for the last decade. Some of you may recall my saying, during one of our earlier "wax" threads, my mentioning having a couple of file-sized boxes filled with wax products that I'd demoed over the years. This was due to two dark cars that I owned (plus one Guards Red Sunbeam roadster)--the Diplomat Blue Silver Shadow (is that an oxymoron?) and a Jetglo '57 Chevy Nomad. Though all of these cars were garage kept in Southern California, I used to punish myself by keeping their paintwork looking absolutely wet, with nary a halo or scratch visible, anywhere. This is where the Scratch-X and Zymol regimen was born.

As soon as the Shadow was waxable after I personally applied the fresh Diplomat Blue Glasurit urethane paintwork, I did so, and a year after that, I tried the clay/wax thing. Clay does work to strip impurities out of the finish; I'd forgotten how absolutely smooth new paint felt, the first time I used it.

However, to do this regularly (as the Clay Salesmen would like you to do) on any car the size of a football pitch (British, remember) is more work than I'm willing to do, especially now with guitars to build, restore, and finish.

Now my cars get washed regularly and waxed every three months. That's it.

[cjj]

Every 3 months! I'm lucky if I hose 'em off with my pressure washer twice a year, let alone waxing them! Of course, living at the end of 10 miles of dirt and mud makes keeping 'em clean somewhat pointless.


Now guitars on the other hand...

[johnallg]

I can never remember my wife's names day - and get in trouble for it every year (Latvians celebrate a certain day of the year for each common first name - kind of like having an extra birthday). In my defense, I usually reply with something like "Welcome to America. Here, have a Pop Tart". I still get a pretty healthy dose of the language though, these days via Skype. It sure beats the old days when we were paying the phone companies $2 per minute or better for her to talk to her family, and the Skype sound quality is incredible. Her mom doesn't speak English and I don't speak Latvian, so when we bring her over to visit it's pretty interesting. We've developed a crude, but workable form of communication. The dog seems to understand her just fine though. Go figure.

http://www.daily-tangents.com/cgi-bin/c ... alendar.pl

Easier - http://www.daily-tangents.com/Kalendars/search/ put her name in the box above "Search the Database".

We just married off our middle daughter to a fine young man from the Ukraine. His mom (Lubovs - Love) came over and stayed at the other house of ours a couple blocks away (in-laws old place) with her other son from Houston and his new wife, who is also fresh from the Ukraine. Both speak/understand little to no English. We speak/understand no Russian. You perfectly understand our communicating together. Sweet woman too. She brought me a bottle of Russian vodka that is really smooth and tasty.