Well I had a small boo boo assembling my cab. Went to make a minor tweak on one of the doors, and it rubbed the pillar, rolled some paint off the edge. This is a SS Navy Blue, topped with a Matte Clear. I dabbed some activated SS on it, and sanded it with 1000. It is close but not quite right (good enough that most won't pick up on it). So with that I have a few questions: 1. What do you guys do about touching up stone chips, etc? 2. Is there a method (sanding the entire thing, or buffing the entire thing) to provide a matte finish? Specifically using a scotchbrite, or possibly a course buffing compound? Just looking for some input....
It comes down to if no one else can see it, or most likely won't see it, is it going to give you sleepless nights knowing it was there ? I know there is a lot of block work there and you are to be commended but seriously - how perfect is perfect ? Isolate that spot. Don't go out too far beyond that spot to make more work. I dab a chip spot with paint and dab it to higher than the body and sand with 1,500 until it fills/even the body and finish buff. If you can find it, you have anal issues in life in general. If you are going to drive this truck..... you are going to have more bug and chip boo - boo's than sleep. Don't be too hard on yourself, work it best you can I guess. Then drive it man - just drive it and enjoy yourself.
Matte finishes are very difficult/to impossible to repair without it showing without repainting/blending the entire panel. You cannot sand and buff because it will polish the surface to a non matte finish.
I'd spray a test panel and try different touch up techniques on that first, see which one you can live with. Another option is re-clear everything shiny...
Matte clear is a lot harder to maintain and fix than shiny. Buffing makes it shiny. How shiny? Don’t know until you do it. Then ya got to make the rest of it match. Fine sandpaper? We have sand paper up to 5000 grit. We did some test panels with just sanding with 3-5k. No buffing. Just a spray detailer. Looked ok But matching the as sprayed matte in my experience is re-spraying. Touchup on an edge might work but I’d keep it to the bare minimum
This is the thing that always kills me when guys with primer or matte finishes tell me about how it must be so tough dealing with shiny paint and how stressful it is. Don't get me wrong, it would suck, but even candies can be blended by a skilled painter. Once a primer or matte paint job gets marred, it's not repairable without a complete spray out of the panel, and you need a place to break it off at, whether it be a seam, a piece of trim, or a gap. Then you need to make sure it's the same color.
I had a disaster happen on my Mysterion reproduction. Got it all finished, painted it like Roth did - white base coat, white pear intermediate coat, 3 coats of urethane candy lime gold, 3 coats of urethane clear. Came out beautiful. Then a fiberglass void appeared on the cowl side. Surface sank 1/16", stood out like a sore thumb. I bit the bullet and attempted a patch. Dug out the quarter sized void, bondo'd it, sanded it w/ 300 wet-or-dry about 2" all around, then used a Harbor Freight purple detail spray gun and reproduced the paint steps in the spot. Finished it with paint blender spray and it came out perfect. All that being said, you should be able to air brush a spot repair with the original paint series. That blender stuff is magic. It really blends repairs perfectly. Spray Max 1k Spot Blender - 3680093 - Walmart.com
To me, looks like your bodywork is nice enough to make it shiny? The only reason I would consider matte is if something was too rough to make shiny. Then, I might also not worry about chips. Anyway, from here, looks like you are doing a great job and that it could easily look good shiny.
Matte shows boo boos as well We did the same prep for matte that we did for glossy I’ve seen wraps show sand scratches, bulls eyes, chips and trash. if someone can spot matte in with the same process as glossy, post pics. I like learning new stuff.
I had a not so small scrape on the side of my 46. I called TCP to find out if I could spot the repaired place in. He told me no way and he was correct. I didn't think so either but wanted their opinion. I did try but there is no good way to make the edges blend. I ended up doing the whole quarter panel door back to half way under the tag.
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