21st July 2008

Last Saturday we hosted the third breakfast club meet of the year, covering perhaps the most important topic of all, namely how to polish your paint safely by hand or machine. Polishing, in our opinion, has always been one of the most misunderstood processes in modern car care, and it was great to be able to go through the contents of the online guide in an interactive, demonstrative fashion. Certainly from the feedback posted on Detailing World, it seems that when it comes to learning about polishing, there is no substitute for demonstrations and hands on practice - we will continue to bear this in mind for future events! Attendance was also up again this time, with just over two dozen folk turning up from all over Aberdeenshire and beyond - our thanks to everyone who participated and made it an enjoyable day. The next meet will be on Saturday 23rd August, and the theme will be how to safely clean and protect your engine bay, using both wet and dry techniques. Everyone is welcome to attend, and we look forward to seeing some of you on the day.

25th June 2008

Last Saturday we hosted the second breakfast club meet of the year, focussing on paint decontamination as the theme for the morning. Attendance was up this time, with just under twenty folk turning up from all over Aberdeenshire and beyond - our thanks to everyone who participated and made it a fun event! Over the course of the morning we demonstrated various methods for decontaminating paint, including the use of solvents and clay bars. Most people had a go at claying Angela's C2, which in just three months from new had acquired quite a lot of contamination from industrial fallout on the horizontal surfaces. The next meet will be on Saturday 19th July, and the theme will be how to polish your paint safely and effectively by hand or machine. The planned demonstrations will include the use of various polishes and polishing machines, with emphasis placed on the increasingly popular Meguiars G220 Dual Action Polishing Machine. Everyone is welcome to attend, and we look forward to seeing some of you on the day.

20th May 2008

Last weekend we hosted our first ever breakfast club meet, and an enjoyable morning it was too! The theme of the meet was how to wash your car safely and effectively, and over the course of the morning we demonstrated various wash techniques and discussed the pros and cons of various wash products. In total, just over a dozen folk turned out for the meet, travelling from all over Aberdeenshire and beyond - our thanks to everyone who participated and contributed to the discussion. The next meet will be on Saturday 21st June, and the theme will be how to clean your paint safely and effectively. The planned demonstrations will include the use of citrus degreasers, tar and glue removers and clay bars. Everyone is welcome to attend, and we look forward to seeing some of you on the day.

Special Announcement

Following on from the success of the interactive demonstrations at the spring open days earlier this year, we thought we would give a little something back to the detailing community that supports us so well by hosting a series of five themed breakfast club style meets over the summer months. The dates and themes will be...

Saturday 17th May - How to wash your car safely and effectively

Saturday 21st Jun - How to clean your paint safely and effectively

Saturday 19th Jul - How to safely polish your paint by hand or machine

Saturday 23rd Aug - How to safely clean and protect your engine bay

Saturday 20th Sep - How to safely clean and protect the interior of your car

All of the meets will run from 9am to 1pm. The content of the demonstrations at each meet will be aimed squarely at the enthusiast, the intention being to pass on knowledge that will make for better, safer car care in the future. The main purpose of these meets is to provide a fun social setting for learning about car care and detailing; attendance is open to all who want to learn and participate. Following on from this, it goes without saying that these meets will not be commercialised in any way; special offers will not be put on for them, and the stockroom will only be opened at the very end of each meet if specifically requested.

Being a breakfast club style meet series, we are looking into the possibility of having hot food available on site. However, until we get an idea of numbers, we are going to hold off from booking a catering van. Therefore, for the first meet, hot food will only be available from the local Somerfield's store, just two minutes down the road. If attendance of the first meet is good, then we will try to get on-site catering for the rest of the meets - bacon rolls would be a fine way to kick each one off!

A final point; if it pours hard with rain on days when outdoor demonstrations are scheduled we may change the theme at the last minute and switch to working on scrap panels indoors - please bear this in mind if travelling far for a specific demonstration. We will be at the mercy of the weather for the meets scheduled for the 17th May and the 23rd August, but the remainder will all be held indoors and so will proceed as planned no matter what the weather is doing. All that remains to be said is we hope to see many of you at the first meet next weekend, when either Angela's new C2 VTS or Clark's new WR1 will get the full wash treatment as part of the demonstrations!

8th May 2008

Despite our best intentions, news updates have been rather thin on the ground this year, reflecting just how busy we have been. So busy in fact, that we have just taken on a new member of staff to assist with order packing and stock control! This should pay dividends in the weeks and months to come, freeing up time for exciting new website updates, including new product photography throughout the car care products section and a complete overhaul of the guides in the car care advice section. Watch this space!

On the subject of being busy, since reopening our diary on April 1st we have taken consecutive bookings for detailing work right up to the end of December this year! As a result, we have temporarily closed the diary, and it will not reopen again until 1st November, at which point we will take bookings for the period 1st Jan 2009 - 31st March 2009 on a first come first served basis. In future, we will only be releasing 3 monthly blocks in the diary at a time, in order to keep the waiting list down to a more manageable level. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused in the meantime.

At the end of March, we ran two back to back open days at our premises in Kintore, and were completely blown away by the level of attendance - we estimate that at least 150 people dropped in over the course of the two days, making it the busiest pair of events we have ever hosted. It was also fantastic to see so many people stepping up and having a go with the machine polishers under the guidance of Clark. Interactive demonstrations are clearly a great way to learn about car care, and with this in mind, we have decided to run a series of weekend breakfast club meets through the summer months in order to progress this idea further - full details will be posted above very shortly.