What's your routine for fixing stone chips? Do you sand them down after paint and DA them?
No, I’m not brave enough to wet sand my paintwork repairs - IMO wet sanding isn’t for the faint hearted! I have a Chipex kit which does a pretty good job, but it takes a little practice to get decent results. The beauty of the Chipex kit is that if you’re not happy with your efforts, you can remove them with the supplied blending solution and start again.
There’s also a Dr Colourchip kit which is pretty much the same as the Chipex kit. They’re not cheap, but as said, you can remove the paint you’ve applied if you’re not happy with your repairs and start again.
There are videos on both the Chipex and Dr Colourchip websites and on YouTube showing how to use the kits. I don’t use the ‘finger spread’ method
to apply the paint - I fill the stone chip with paint using the end of a cocktail stick until the level of the new paint is just above the surrounding paint. I then level it using the supplied blending solution, applied to the cloth wrapped around the sponge block (both supplied). It’s important to let the blending solution do the work and not rub too hard, otherwise you’ll remove the paint you’ve just applied.
Funny this topic has come up, I touched in some stone chips today. I have 12 on the front bumper/ bonnet. Only done 10k, the paint is as soft as butter!
I’m usually quite good with stone chips but managed to ‘over so’ some of them to the point they look quite blobby. I’m planning on using some langka blob eliminator to level them down, and a quick hand polish with meguairs ultimate to being the shine back afterwards.
I wish I owned a DA and had the skill to wet sand, that’s the only way to achieve as close to perfect stone chip repairs as possible.
I don’t wet sand my stone chip repairs. A guy over on Seatcupra.net has just wet sanded through the clear coat on his Leon’s bonnet when he was repairing some stone chips. He’s now faced with a bonnet respray. The only positive to come out of that is the bonnet will now be blemish free.
I’m not keen on the VW touch up pens as the paint does seem to go thick and blobby quite quickly, which makes it difficult to apply - and I’m not brave enough to attempt wet sanding!