Most commonly, clay bars are a chunk of either natural or synthetic clay - but can also come in the form of different clay tools, such as clay cloths, clay mitts & clay blocks. By gently rubbing a clay bar or tool along your paintwork with a suitable clay lubricant, you are picking up and abrading these contaminants off of your paintwork. This makes your paintwork feel smooth to the touch, but more importantly cleans your paintwork and ensures all embedded contamination that doesn’t come off with your standard wash is removed. You can almost think of this process as “exfoliation” when it comes to skin care, you are essentially exfoliating your paintwork with your clay bar. This is very important, because if you don’t utilise a clay bar treatment in your decontamination process, then iron, tar & other contaminants interfere with your protection by being a physical barrier, and stopping your protection from properly bonding to the paintwork - reducing durability, and impairing performance.
Using a clay bar or tool such as a clay mitt, cloth or block is very simple.
We like to incorporate your clay bar treatment & decontamination process into our washing stage, so here is a step-by-step guide you can follow when looking to get into clay bar detailing.
Cheaper clay bars tend to have a lower quality, or cheaper grade of clay. What this does is it can impair performance, reducing its capability to remove more stubborn, embedded contaminants - but it can also cause more marring, and scratching in the paintwork. It will also be a lot less durable, deteriorating as you use it. High quality clay bars & tools such as clay mitts, cloths and bars will remove contamination to a higher level, have less chance to marr and scratch the paint and can be re-used many times after being washed out. Here at Waxit, we only stock high quality detailing clay bars & tools, so you can shop with confidence with our entire range.
Clay bars tend to be less “re-usable”, but can sometimes be re-used if there is not a lot of contamination on the car. Typically with clay bars, you buy a big block, and you grab a little bit each time you decontaminate your paintwork - so it does last awhile. With synthetic clay mitts, cloths & blocks - they can be re-used, as you simply wash them after use. They do wear down slowly, and may need to be replaced after a while - but they are fantastic for more maintenance and lighter jobs of removing contamination.
Clay bars do not remove any scratches, in fact most of the time, you may cause some very light marring when clay barring. This is because fundamentally, you are abrading contaminants over the paintwork as you remove them with a clay bar. This type of “mechanical” decontamination when using a clay bar or tool is fantastic for removing stubborn, embedded contamination that can’t be removed with a chemical, but the unfortunate result is this can cause some light swirls marks. Most people tend to follow up the decontamination stage with a polishing stage, either by hand or with a machine to ensure their clean & smooth finish now looks the part as well.
Yes and no. When looking at less durable forms of protection, such as waxes, polymer based sealants, spray coatings, spray waxes, etc. A clay bar treatment will most likely harm this protection, as we will be abrading off contaminants, along with the protection itself. However, when looking at ceramic coatings, paint protection films & vinyl wraps - you can technically use a clay bar over these, however due to the fact that light swirls and marring may be induced into the finish as a result, it’s often not recommended. Instead, we like to use a decontamination wash, such as CarPro Iron X Snow Soap as a periodic maintenance solution (perhaps every 3-6 months), to help remove contamination, and stop any stubborn build ups.
Car decontamination products also include all purpose cleaners, water spot removers, surface iron removers, bug and tar removers, prep sprays, and full decontamination kits.
