How to: Remove scratches from piano black trim by hand

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After a recent trip to Costco, I noticed that my Explorer’s piano black trim was severely scratched, almost resembling Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. Check out the picture above to see the extent of the damage.

Thankfully, I managed to remove the majority of these scratches by hand, and I’m going to show you how I did it.

What I’ll be using

Step One: Clean the piano black trim. I used soapy water to clean the dirt off, then rinsed with water, and then wiped dry.

Step Two: Once the area is cleaned put some Meguiar’s M10508 Mirror Glaze Ultra-Cut Compound onto a applicator pad. Then polish the area in a circular motion if possible. I polished the area for a good 5 minutes.

Step Three: Wipe the polish away with a microfiber towel and inspect. I was happy with the result of from step two so I went onto the next step. If there’s any noticeable defects then I would have went back to the previous step.

Step Four:  I then used Meguiar’s M20508 Mirror Glaze Ultra Finishing Polish to finalized the polish. I used the same circular motion when applying the polish.

Step Five: Wipe the polish away with a microfiber towel and inspect. I was really happy with the result so I finalized this step with wax.

Before and After

Note- No wax was applied when I took the after image. It was naturally glossy after polishing.

Conclusion

It no longer resembled a painting of the Starry Night. It eliminated a majority of the surface scratches and made it glossy. There were some scratches that can be observed when looking closer. Here’s a zoomed up picture of those scratches:

Overall, I was happy with the outcome and the scratches weren’t as noticeable compared to before. It’s possible that I could have spent more time on step two to remove the remaining scratches. But I know in the future, there will be more scratches. How to prevent future scratches? Unfortunately, there’s only so much that can be done to prevent future piano black from scratching. The best option is to put on a 3M Clear Paint Protection vinyl film to protect the trim.

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