How to NOT Wetsand through Clear when doing Touch Ups?

[Ericsworld]

In my research of different paint chip touch up techniques, from Dr. Color Chip to others... I think that this method stands out as providing the best results:

YouTube

But it requires wet sanding the area around the chip with 2000-2500 grit and eventually finishing off with 3000 grit once the clear is leveled down.

How can I make sure I'm not taking too much clear off during the process? Will a paint meter gauge even be useful, because that still doesn't tell you how much clear there is?

Car in question is a 1998 Porsche 911 with original paint.

 

[TrustJesus]

@Eric, I’m not an expert but I’m answer.
Yes, the paint gauge will tell you how much clear coat is left. From my understanding 4.0 is where you should stop removing clear coat.

As far as wet sanding, that’s another area I’m learning (one day). Keep at it, but wait for the real pros. God bless

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

What you're trying to do is on the advanced side of the paint correction spectrum.

Mostly because the clear layer of clearcoat is so damn thin. Here's something I've shared in the past on this topic and it's just as accurate today as the day I typed it out.

Read the below carefully, it's not just words - it's real deep info.



Couple of comments to anyone ever attempting to do this kind of repair...


1. When possible, let the paint dry longer. You want the touch up paint as dry and hard as possible before you start sanding and buffing on it.

The problem you can run into when you start buffing on touch-up paint is when you warm it up, especially when using a rotary buffer, you can actually pull the touch-up paint right out of the scratch or rock chip if you're attempting to do this to a rock chip. Then you're back to where you started only now you've got sanding marks in the surrounding paint.



2. Touch-up paint will always be softer than the factory paint surrounding the repair, here's how this affects the buffing process. When you go to buff out your sanding marks, they will buff out quickly and easily out of the touch-up paint because this paint is softer, especially if it's only dried a short time. The surrounding paint will be harder and thus it will be harder or more difficult to remove your sanding marks out 100%

It's easy to sand paint as at it's core that's putting scratches into the paint... the tricky part is getting the ALL out...

When doing touch-up repair work on clear coat paints, what I've seen and experienced is the sanding marks come out of the touch-up paint quickly and easily but not so with the factory clear.

So what a person does is continue buffing the sanding marks in the surrounding clear paint and what happens is you heat the panel up and your buffing pad will literally pull the touch-up paint out of the scratch or chip.



3. You really need a rotary buffer to remove sanding marks 100%

Can you do it with a DA or Flex or even Cyclo? Sure but it will take longer. Again the sanding marks will come out of the touch-up paint quickly and easily, it's the surrounding factory baked-on clear coat that you'll need to be concerned with.

Try to finish sand with #3000 or higher before buffing.

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

And here's just one reason, what you're trying to do is so difficult.

Click the link, read the words and look at the pictures. If you really want to understand - do the thing I'm doing in the pictures.


Clearcoats are thin by Mike Phillips

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

And...

For most people, most cars and most customers.... I recommend what I show here,

How to use the Dr. ColorChip Paint Chip Repair Systems

You're intentions are noble for sure, been there done this myself over the years. Sad to say, what happens more often than not is,

You turn a Mole Hill into a Mountain


And should you burn through the paint when trying to buff out your sanding marks, here's what I say about that,

Words cannot describe the heart-sinking feeling that overcomes you when you discover you have buffed through the paint - Mike Phillips


See this article,


When to stop buffing - Or - How far should you go to remove swirls and scratches?

 

[Ericsworld]

Thank you for the info, very informative!! I think seeing just how thin the clear coat is (post-it note) validated my concerns with wetsanding to do this touch up method. I guess I will have to settle with the Dr. Color Chip and slowly try to build up and fill the chips per your tutorial to get the best results.

Would you say that the end result of the wetsand and clear method I shared in the video of the OP vs. a properly applied Dr. Color Chip would be comparable? Or at least comparable enough to not warrant the risk of the former method?

 

[vobro]

After years of owning BMW’s (rock chip magnets) I’ve done all kinds of methods and no matter what I did if the paint doesn’t match perfectly I went from chips to spots. What I mean is when the paint isn’t spot on the repair looks like repairs, if you have metallic paint it’s more noticeable. I agree with Mike about making about an ant hill to a mountain reference, if you have 20 spots you have 20 times to mess up. What I do now is the sandpaper on a pencil erasure trick to level of the impact area and fill to level, in a month or so I’ll lightly polish the area and walk away.

A repair is a repair and most times it looks good from a distance

 

[tmdals0213]

I’ve messaged Mr. Phillips about my issue but just in case he doesn’t see it + hoping to get some others to chime in, does anyone what’s happening here?

Steps I’ve taken are:
- clean rock chip
- sand down the edges with 2k and 3k
- filled in chip

But as you can see, I’ve created a “dent” in doing so. I noticed this AFTER sanding. I made sure I did the initial sand with 2k and then feathered it out with 3k.

Am i sanding too much around the chipped area, causing it to be shallow/look shallow/dented looking?

Driving me crazy as to why this is occurring..

Going to be a long shot but do you think it's possible to make it look flat with additional clear coat/sanding it flush?

Thank you for looking

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

Got your PM Tony, I'll do my best to share what I think below....

First here's your first and last pictures, I downloaded the full size versions and then cropped out the fluff.


Here's the before, after applying touch-up paint.

Here's the after, after sanding and polishing.

Here's my guess....

Whatever impacted the body panel hard enough to chip the paint also dented the sheet metal - a little. That's why there's a chip in the paint and that's why the resulting fix is not totally flat.


Like I've said before, doing this type of work is really difficult. There are factors out of your control no matter how good or how great you are at this.


In my opinion, while your goal of perfection is noble, the end-results aren't the worst I've seen.


You could try hand sanding again with a flat backing pad and something like #2500 or #3000 and the CAREFULLY removing your sanding marks. You might go from a Mole Hill to a Mountain.

 

[Mike PhillipsMike Phillips is verified member.]

After reading through the comments for the YouTube video linked above...


Just throwing this out there - from the year 2010 - gosh if anyone can find a picture of this idea that dates before 2010 please share it.


I'm the last person to claim someone else's idea as my own, but here's an instance where I had a similar idea but have never tried it. In keeping with the saying,

"You don't know what you can do until you try"

• Take a hole punch, punch out some holes in some sandpaper.

• Cut a pencil down to about 2-3 inches long on the erasure side.

• Glue these onto the face of an unused pencil erasure.

• Place the pencil in a Drill.

• Carefully hold the drill in such a way to sand on top of a rock chip.

The goal is to take a ragged random shaped rock chip and turn it into a perfect circle with an even impression in the paint and now sanded clean for good adhesion.

Then apply your touch-up paint till the hole is level.

Allow to dry for about a week or two in warm temperatures.

Carefully sand the touch-up paint flat.

Remove sanding marks.


I'll give it a try on my Jimmy after the glue has dried that's holding the #1000 Grit Sandpaper to the Pencil Erasure.

I think a lower grit would actually work better, like #600 or #800 but #1000 is as low as I had at my desk.

 

[2black1s]

What those pictures look like to me is...

1. The chip is not filled enough. It is still below the level of the original finish.

2. The touch up paint has exceeded the margins of the chip creating a high area around the chip. As a result of this the center area of the touch up appears low. This is the "dent" you speak of, although it's not really a dent at all. It's the chip that hasn't been built up with paint enough yet.

One of the key steps in touching up chips is to keep the paint inside the chip. Exceeding the margins of the chip leads to the results you are encountering.

I have a thread on here somewhere detailing my process for touch-ups. I'll search for it and provide a link when I get a chance.

Here's the link... https://www.autogeekonline.net/foru...everyone-every-chip.html?highlight=discerning

 

[tmdals0213]

I'll give it a try on my Jimmy after the glue has dried that's holding the #1000 Grit Sandpaper to the Pencil Erasure.

I think a lower grit would actually work better, like #600 or #800 but #1000 is as low as I had at my desk.

Thank you so much for the posts Mr. Phillips, I think are about 6 different articles you wrote regarding touch up and sanding, and even having read them 10+ times - touch up jobs are definitely not the easiest nor something I'd want to ever do again haha.

I'm going to give it another go and report back!

What those pictures look like to me is...

Here's the link... https://www.autogeekonline.net/foru...everyone-every-chip.html?highlight=discerning

Thank you sir! As you and Mr. Phillips have stated, I too am now agreeing with the fact that the paint that exceeds the margin + not enough paint in the void is whats causing this "dented" look.

And your touch up write up is superb and so concise, thank you so much! I'm going to give it another go with thinner layers and see if I can do a better job, will report back!!

-

One extra question I have is, if the base coat is under the margin, and the clear is to be flush with the margin, wouldn't it cause the chip margin to still be seen?

Because, while the margin will be reduced with the initial sanding, wouldn't there still be a visible outline of the chip - maginified by the clear coat + base coat being "blended" with the margin?

Hopefully my explaination made sense.