Rats ass..... Well, I now know who made some of those scratches on the roof. Me. I certainly can't blame them all on cat claws based on I learned today.
When I took the previous scratches out, I made sure I sanded perpendicular to the scratches with the 2000 grit paper. I eyeballed my work this morning and everything looked good as far as I could tell.
But when I worked at it with the buffing compound, I got some more scratches showing up. This time in the opposite direction. Was only about a dozen of them, and mostly where the roof has a slight bow down the center, front to back. I'm thinking the sanding block I'm using is too rigid and the corners must have ben gouging the paint in that area...
Either that or the paper was bunching up or something. Beats me, but this is really a pain in the ass having to deal with things I caused myself.
So I tackled it again with 2000 grit and used a different sanding tool. This is a sort of foam thingie that is slightly rounded instead of flat. Every thing looks OK by eyeball, but I won't know if there are MORE scratches till I compound it again.
Well, I said this was a learning experience, didn't I?
BTW, I tried all kinds of different foam pads with every buffing compound I had, and I was getting pretty frustrated. It glossed the surface OK, but it was very hazy looking and I could see lots of sanding scratches. I was feeling pretty glum about this and decided to fall back and try the wool buffing pad instead of those foam things. And yeah, that did the trick. Evidently the foam pads just aren't aggressive enough to take out the sanding scratches. At least not in the time frame I tried using them. So tomorrow I'm just going to go straight to the wool pad and hopefully get this knocked out.