He’s going for it guys. I’ll be honest for you guys, that smell, that spray is not, like you mentioned, it’s not very pleasant. It smelled honestly like rotten eggs or something along the lines of that. Yeah, even after a while, like the smell just lingers. How you… I’ll be honest, how do you deal with that smell every day though? Just adjust to it I guess. How long you been, uh, auto detailing?
Not too long to be honest. How’d you get started? Um, honestly from photography. From photography? Yeah, uh, most of my photography revolves around cars.
Okay. And that just kind of got me to where I’m at. Um, I do have a YouTube channel but it doesn’t really revolve around my photography.
My Instagram is kind of more about that. It’s a barbaric Dave.
Barbaric Dave? Yeah, it’s like barbaric.dave or barbaricdave. either one. What are, I guess, the challenges of obviously wheel cleaning or what you’re doing?
Squatting down the whole time. But, uh, other than that, it would be like the wheels that have way more spokes than this. But wheels like this are fairly simple to clean. I’ll just rinse this one off and I’ll move on to the back one. Time-wise, how long does a newman take to do like a full set of four?
Like the big truck wheels? Those take a while. But a little guy like this takes fairly, like, fairly quick.
I would say about, if you got two people, it’d be seven minutes or less. Oh, okay.
Yeah. What’s the longest a set of wheels has taken you to do? There was a set of truck wheels recently. There were, um, there were some black wheels. For some reason it took a lot longer.
It seems like on black wheels you can see a lot more of, uh, the dirt and all that, you know. Did they teach you auto detailing here or did you already know at least like some of it before you got hired? I kind of knew just like the basics of it. And then when I got here, they taught me everything way more in depth. And like he was saying, it is when you do have to kneel down and do this.
I’m sure after hours of kneeling down and doing this, it probably hurts. Yeah, it gets repetitive. Your knees probably don’t feel the best. Um, I kind of ruined my knees being a dancer anyway, so. Oh.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. The answer in what way? Like hip hop dancing or?
Yeah. Yeah. Like hip hop, hip hop, dubstep, animation. Oh, wow. Those lines.
Oh yeah. Also helps to roll up your sleeves a little bit. Yeah. That holds a lot of water. Yeah.
I can emphasize one why he’s saying when you got larger hands trying to get in there, it’s probably not, not the easiest. You know, imply a lot of elbow glutes to this. So final thoughts on the whole process. Doesn’t take very long. Three to four minutes at the most.
For the most part, if your wheels are relatively clear to start with. I’m sure obviously it takes longer for dirtier wheels. I like to measure my tape accordingly. Let’s do this so that way we don’t scuff up any paint while we’re buffing.
And then we’ll do this to both headlights.
Get it right up on the edge. So now we don’t scuff no paint. One little extra-step that I like to take though. I like the clay bar. My headlights.
A little chilly out too. So, the clay doesn’t want too Grish down nice. It’s easier to do it in warmer weather. I imagine. Yeah.
I started in 2018. Been on and off with it though. So, I have though, I’ve always been doing headlight restoration. So that’s always kind of been my thing. How do I get into auto detailing?
Yeah. It was something I kind of found like amusing to watch on YouTube and all that stuff. So after my first job, I was kind of like, you know, I want to get into something automotive, but I don’t want to do anything that’s too physical or too like getting my hands dirty.
I want to work around cars, but I want to do either like the performance aspect of it or stuff that you could see. To me, it’s like satisfying to do the work.
Like someone brings in a dirty car and you clean it for them and then they see the car and it’s like, yo, this actually looks good. It uplifts you a little bit to see people’s reactions when you get like a nice car. Well, for you guys, it’s very cold out here. For the two of us, I appreciate him doing this because it’s freezing out here. He’s saying the tapes a little flexible.
Certain parts like underneath the headlight, there’s a little bit of space so you can tuck the tape in. I always like doing paint corrections as well, but I haven’t gotten too much of those in the last couple of years. I haven’t really promoted myself like that when I was working for myself and all that.
I would just say if it’s interesting to you, try it out. Find your local detailing shop.
Anything you could do that you have a passion for automotive, just try to step your foot in the door because you never know what opportunities you might get after that. And for me, it’s kind of been like I’ve always loved cars and all that. So I’ve always wanted to keep my foot in the door with cars. Like the difference between when you actually like what they started off as and as to what they ended at. Wow.
So final thoughts on end results. Hey, man, for your first time, I think it looks good. It looks just as good as mine, if not maybe better.
Some people don’t know what they have. You know, they see it as like some kind of object, you know.
And for me, a car guy, like I see it and it’s like, wow, that’s a gem. You know, it could look 10 times better. So I feel like, you know, when things like this, it’s like taking a penny and turning it into a dime. Paint correction is removing scratches and swirls in the paint, trying to make the paint looks its best without it actually getting paint job done. Watermarks, for example, or tree side, bird pool, stuff like that.
If you let it sit after a while, it will eat into the paint. I was a jeweler before the you were a jeweler.
I was a jeweler. Yeah. Honestly, when I started as a jeweler, I started as a polisher.
I was able to polish metals. Once I learned how to polish metal, I say it was a wrap after that. I worked at a granite company. I started polishing granite countertops, bathroom countertops, islands and stuff like that, you know, and I became really good with like the product, the machines, the material, you know, and to like to give whatever I’m working on to give it that shine, that glint, you know, that like that pop feel. I’ll be honest with you guys, it’s not as easy as it looks.
The vibration, it takes a minute to get used to because obviously the machine will go where it or the guide you like you said, the machine has a pattern it wants to make. So if you try to move it the other direction, obviously that force between the machine and your hand. Same process you did with the small tool, just you know, going for it guys. How do you feel about the big one? Still a lot of I’ll give you, I’ll be honest with you, I still a lot of vibration for people new to it, like, like getting used to that vibration again, it’s like if you use any other power tool, it just takes a bit of time to get used to it.
Microfiber, right? Fresh clean one because you don’t want to make more work for it. Came out a little better than yesterday. I’ll say that for sure. Sure did.
I initially started in high school. I did collision repair at Prince Tech in Hartford. That’s somewhat where I got my experience with using a buffer and working on cars in general. Here at Groundwork, it’s a little different because we focus on making the car look better as is.
It’s not something where we’re fixing panels because the car got cracked.
In general, all together with my four years and here at Groundwork, it would be almost eight years now. In my class, when I was in high school, the top two in the class was actually me and another girl. So I’m kind of used to like being the only girl, if that makes any sense. Yeah. I think the hardest part in general for this kind of job, male or female, is just having the patient.
Having the patients to control your overall mental emotion, physical emotion, because it can get tough at times. The only dangers in auto detailing is just overall pretty basic. You got to make sure you wear gloves because you don’t want to get in contact with getting skin irritations or anything like that. Using the machines are probably like the riskiest things. And obviously when we have cars jacked up.
But we do use a lot of chemicals, so that’s pretty much that would be like the most hazardous. What I would say for me is the overall satisfaction of like having OCD, because at the beginning, the car makes you cringe. You get to the point where like it’s no longer cringe because you made it look as perfect as it can get, which is the same thing as doing like a headlight restoration because you see how gunked up it is and it looks like it has no potential. But by the time you’re finished working on it and giving it its time, then there’s where you get that satisfaction because you made it look better than what it was.
There’s not a lot of females or that you’ve seen.
There’s not a lot of females in the industry. Like the only other shop that I’ve been to where there were females mainly honestly was Redline Auto and they do vinyl rabbit. What advice you got for people? My advice in terms of the detail world and overall expectations of being like the reality of it is that not every day is going to be the same. And being in this kind of field, nothing feels repetitive.
You do the same services and things like that. But you see, you get different satisfactions per car. Like, you know, you can work on a car that’s low value to a car that’s high value. And in the end, it still gives you the same satisfaction because you got to make it look better, make it more of a girl world.
I would say it’s just, you know, making yourself seem big in a business that is more male dominant.
Just stand your ground and don’t be scared to be smart. Just, you know, show off every single time. If you feel like you can do better, then don’t stoop yourself down because there’s a male perspective that’s been doing it for 20 years and they can do it better at that moment. Because I feel like that gets in the way sometimes too. OK.
Hey, you guys, thank you for checking out the video. Hopefully you found it enjoyable. Make sure to like, comment and subscribe. If you are also interested in hearing the perspective of another female in the auto industry, check out our vinyl wrapping video who features Nadia, who is a professional vinyl wrapper…
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