Paint Chip Overcorrection

[spitshine1]

Hi and Happy Holidays!

Need some help.
I purchased a used car last week. While I was detailing I found a spot on the hood that has to much paint over the paint chip.
What is the safest way of smoothing out this defect?
I did submit a photo.
I have experience with rotary buffers and I also have a Flex polisher.
Thanks for the help.
P.s I used a post it note for ID of the area.
Any thoughts on paint chip kits?

[hilld]

My thought would be to wet sand, then compound and polish.

But your pic sucks, can't really see anything going on there, it is too small and way too far away to see a paint chip.

[aim4squirrels]

You need to sand the bubble of paint even or level to the surrounding paint.

By hand, I wouldn't use anything but sanding blocks and a very light touch. Start by shaving the top of the blob down starting absolutely parallel with the panel you're working on and when you get close to the rest of the paint (blob sanding spot will widen or you'll start to nick the clear near the blob) stop and move to the next finer block. Then only remove the sanding marks from the previous grit, don't try to remove more blob. Get yourself to 3000 grit and you can remove those marks with a compound followed by a polish to refine it.

Be very careful sanding any vehicle, I'd only suggest doing it if you can't live with the mark you're seeing.

The more aggressive you start, the faster you can level (and burn through), but the more steps you need to get you to the compounding step. Mike Phillips has a thread about this somewhere on the forum where he's working on paint runs on a repainted truck. I'd read it through several times before attempting the procedure.

[Audios S6]

I would use the advice right above and also tape off around the blob to protect the adjacent paint. If using a rigid sanding block, the tape also has the advantage of not letting you sand too deep as you will only go to the approximate height of the tape. Then step up your sanding media. I'd start at 1500 for the majority. Then remove the tape and go to 3000 grit. Depending on how the sanding marks look after 1500, you may need an intermediate step at 2000 grit, just depends how clean you work with the 1500.

[allenk4]

If you just bought it used recently, there is a chance that the blob could be eliminated with a solvent, like the Langka Blob Eliminator

[allenk4]

I would use the advice right above and also tape off around the blob to protect the adjacent paint. If using a rigid sanding block, the tape also has the advantage of not letting you sand too deep as you will only go to the approximate height of the tape. Then step up your sanding media. I'd start at 1500 for the majority. Then remove the tape and go to 3000 grit. Depending on how the sanding marks look after 1500, you may need an intermediate step at 2000 grit, just depends how clean you work with the 1500.


Have you had success with this technique?

[Dogfather]

If you just bought it used recently, there is a chance that the blob could be eliminated with a solvent, like the Langka Blob Eliminator

That's what came to my mind. Probably the least aggresive approach.

[spitshine1]

Thank you for the suggestions.
Where should purchase the blocks, I would imagine going to the auto body supply store these items?

[Audios S6]

Have you had success with this technique?


I have in the past. Now I use a similar method, but incorporate a 2" air sander. I normally need to do 3 steps since the sander works so quick it's near impossible to work as clean as you can by hand.

I just keep the tape very, very close to the blob. It's not as effective with flexible sanding blocks since they contour over the tape edge (think texture matching vs texture removal when doing large scale sanding). I'll try to dig up some photos.

[Audios S6]

Have you had success with this technique?

Couple photos, the silver was wetsanding a customer's touchup work. I never figured out why there was the darker ring around the spot. I think the guy used some really old touchup paint that had separated. The black was touched up and sanded by me.

Silver paint during. You can see form the tape that I've already been at it a while, but the adjacent paint is still untouched.
http://i1372.photobucket.com/albums/ag359/krus0094/DSCN1302_zps0d8f51bb.jpg (http://s1372.photobucket.com/user/krus0094/media/DSCN1302_zps0d8f51bb.jpg.html)

Silver paint after. By comparing during and after you can see that he got a ton of touchup outside of the actual chip. Was able to get it all the way out, but still not burn through the adjacent clear or even leave a big divot.
http://i1372.photobucket.com/albums/ag359/krus0094/IMG_5592_zps717ba564.jpg (http://s1372.photobucket.com/user/krus0094/media/IMG_5592_zps717ba564.jpg.html)



And an after, this was done with the sander. This one had to be taped regardless since it was so close to the lamp and a few edges. There were actually 3 scratches here. Two of them are apparent from the heavy flake density on the bottom edge, the third is below the other two, you can't even tell it's there expect for the slight bump in the line of the shadow.
http://i1371.photobucket.com/albums/ag290/detailedcreationsmpls/1990%20Audi%20V8Q/IMG_1441_zps0bb93206.jpg (http://s1371.photobucket.com/user/detailedcreationsmpls/media/1990%20Audi%20V8Q/IMG_1441_zps0bb93206.jpg.html)


Both were done using the technique I described above. For really large blobs or super thin adjacent paint, I'm not familiar with a safer option. Maybe the razor (can't remember the name, shark?) or on fresh paint using a thinner.

[allenk4]

Mirka makes the Shark Blade denibber. BuffDaddy sells them

Festool also makes a denibber

3M makes a really neat battery powered denibber with tiny sandpaper pads

[ame="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZNB0HLqhnU"]3M™ Perfect-It™ Denibbing System - YouTube[/video]

[Audios S6]

Mirka makes the Shark Blade denibber. BuffDaddy sells them

Festool also makes a denibber

3M makes a really neat battery powered denibber with tiny sandpaper pads



Shark blade, that's the one. Thanks Allen!

For something with a 3M label on it, that denibber is not terribly priced; but I'm not seeing 3000 grit pads available, which is a big turn off for me. I would love that kind of surgical precision though.

[allenk4]

Shark blade, that's the one. Thanks Allen!

For something with a 3M label on it, that denibber is not terribly priced; but I'm not seeing 3000 grit pads available, which is a big turn off for me. I would love that kind of surgical precision though.

Once you get to P3000 there is no need for surgical precision, IMO, since you will be compounding with a 3" pad anyway


The 3M denibber is I tool that seems to jump into body shop employee lunch boxes and ends up on Ebay. Really good prices there, if you don't mind supporting Criminals

[Audios S6]

Once you get to P3000 there is no need for surgical precision, IMO, since you will be compounding with a 3" pad anyway




I agree, and I tend to do 3000 to get out any 1500 scratches faster. I'll also rarely do spot work, I just don't get asked to do that. I'll normally correct the whole panel, and having to carry around and break a third tool for that process isn't ideal for me.

Certainly there are other methods that capitalize on this tool/system.

[KB in MD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fheERlqNzQA