Thanks for confirming our course of action Mike. The chip was given 2-3 coats of touch-up last night and each one continued to recess itself into the chip so I think we've got a couple more to go.
Sounds about right.
As paint dries it shrinks. The mistake most people make when trying to use touch-up paint to fix a rock chip, especially a deep rock chip is they get into a hurry and try to add too much paint too soon.
The take a divot, (a chipped out area), and turn it into a blog. This then creates a new, opposite problem.
Just one thing we've always been unsure of; you're saying to wax or seal over it immediately after we finish correcting the area.
Touch-up doesn't need drying/off-gassing time like a normal spray?
I should have said let the paint dry real good first before doing all of the finishing steps.
Paint does need to outgas and fully harden before sealing but when working on small stuff like this it's not the same big picture issue it would be than if say you just re-sprayed a 1971 Chevelle that is a factory 454 car. Like this brand new paint job...
Jay's new muscle car projects - Wetsand, cut and buff...
Also, I don't care how much money I had, I would not pay for a respray on an entire panel for one rock-chip.
I agree. Especially knowing that if you did do that, the next day according to Murphy's Law you would probably get a new rock chip on the same panel making all that time, money and energy for naught.
This one will prove a challenge being so deep but we've got the car for 5 days and don't have to rush application, drying, leveling, or sanding.
And on the topic of drying, leveling and sanding, not so much for you but for anyone reading this into the future, here's my comments based upon experience on this topic.
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.
:xyxthumbs:
oke:
As it gets closer to level then you can start going a bit heavier on the outer edges. Finally going beyond the edges and build up 2~3 (or more) coats.