Folks: here's another method of filling in a lot of small stone chips. This is the black BMW 740iL that I recently did. I was "fighting" those chips for hours trying to fill them in individually. The problem with that method is they end up looking like a bad case of "car acne"...lots of blobs that are raised above the level of the OEM paint.
Here's a before pic of just a small sample of area. All those white dots are chips that you can see from compounding
For the process, I mixed the touch-up paint with some reducer to thin it out and lengthen the drying time.
Next, I loaded the touch-up in a syringe (being a diabetic, I've got a never ending supply of those) and applied a "line" of touch-up.
Following the line, I used a rubber, beveled edge 3M "squeege" and wiped the area in a directional mode.
I placed the halogen lights close to the area (approx. 18 inches) for the paint to accelerate dry. I let the lights assist for 30 minutes and removed them to cool down the area (another 15 minutes or so).
Then, we mixed up some "secret sauce" in the form of linseed oil + reducer and folded a blue paper shop towel around a rubber block and saturated the towel. Rubbing carefully and keeping the towel soaked in that mixture, it will remove the paint from the top surface and keep the paint in the chip holes. This process takes 15-20 minutes and constantly watching. The reason for the block and not your fingers, is the block is a constant and your fingers could apply too much pressure (thereby removing the paint from the chip holes).
After wiping the area with an old microfiber, I re-applied a coat of #26 with a pc and buffed to the shine you see.
The entire process for the hood (the most chipped area of the car) was 3 hours and it included some stray chips on the side of the car.
Here's 2 pics of each method: First is the touch up with a brush...the blobs are evident.
This is the smear method. Did we get every single chip...Nope! But the finish came out great for a car with 85,000 road miles.
Toto
Good luck.
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