Please refer to my post on my first DIY paint job and you'll note that everything went well until I applied the clear coat. If you've got a scratch that requires filling, painting and sanding a small area (e.g., 1"x3") of the door or hood how do you apply the final clear coat without spraying the entire door or hood, and if you mask a small area, how do deal with the picture-frame the tape creates? Just to clarify for other newbies (like me): Clear Coat, like any spray paint, creates a wet spot where you're concentrating the spray and a dust-like surface further out where the over-spray lands. If you mask off just the area you want to coat, then the tape creates a ridge of clear coat. So unless you're prepared to paint the entire door or hood to repair a small scratch... well, I'm too much of a novice to see the solution.[:p]
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1990 560SEL
Midnight Blue & Grey Leather Interior
"The Money Pit"
100,000 and counting (repair$ and miles)
Another way to prevent the picture frame effect in dealing with a small area is to not mask at all if it is in a location that allows you to do so. Apply the clear to your area of interest and then gradually feather it out to the edges.
Then when you come back and do your final polish out (and you must do this final polish with a medium cut glaze like Meguiars #80 Speed Glaze applied by machine), you can blend back into the existing clear coat easily without having to deal with straight edges of unequal thickness.
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"The true delight is in the finding out, rather than in the knowing." - Isaac Asimov
'99 SLK230 Sport
'00 ML320
'95 BMW 525iA (RIP)
'99 Honda Passport
The problem with spot spraying is you end up with a thicker coat at the point of application. You have to take this thickness and let it gradually reduce to the point where it blends seamlessly back into the original finish.
This is how body shops do it, but they use more aggressive buffing techinques with rotary buffers (I would not recommed the use of rotary buffers by non experienced users) and progressively lighter cut polishes. The end result is the repair is tied into the original paint and even most experts could not tell you the point where old becomes new.
Please refer to my post on my first DIY paint job and you'll note that everything went well until I applied the clear coat. If you've got a scratch that requires filling, painting and sanding a small area (e.g., 1"x3") of the door or hood how do you apply the final clear coat without spraying the entire door or hood, and if you mask a small area, how do deal with the picture-frame the tape creates? Just to clarify for other newbies (like me): Clear Coat, like any spray paint, creates a wet spot where you're concentrating the spray and a dust-like surface further out where the over-spray lands. If you mask off just the area you want to coat, then the tape creates a ridge of clear coat. So unless you're prepared to paint the entire door or hood to repair a small scratch... well, I'm too much of a novice to see the solution.[:p]
There's a very simply solution to your problem that no one else has mentioned. You've already figured out not to mask too closely to the repair, or you'll get "window framing". As others have pointed out, you need to blend the repaired area into the surrounding area, but there's a better way of doing it than using compounds and polishes to knock down the heavier spots. The best way to blend the area is by progressively over-reducing your clear as you move away from the repair.
Spray a full, wet coat of clear on the area of the repair (or two coats, properly observing the manufacturer's guidelines for flash time).
Then, dump out all but a few ounces of the clearcoat/reducer/catalyst mixture from your gun, and add an ounce or two of straight reducer to what's left in your gun. Use this mixture to spray another full wet coat, overlapping the edges of your previous full-strength coat by about 50%. Then as you move further away from the repair, keep adding additional reducer to thin the mixture even more. Your third or fourth pass should be almost pure reducer. This allows you to blend the repaired area in with the rest of the panel without adding too much extra thickness, since the reducer flashes off without leaving anything behind. And since your last pass is almost pure reducer, you won't get the "dusting" problem beyond the edges of your last pass.
When you're done, let it dry however long the paint manufacturer recommends, then wet-sand it with some 2000-grit sandpaper and polish it. There's absolutely no need to apply full-strength clear coats beyond the area of your repair - that just makes more work for you to remove it to match the thickness across the panel.
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