Rock Chips

I have always hated to do dings & things. Put a dab of paint in a chip and it runs out! This year I tried something new (to me anyway) I placed my left wing on saw-horses with leading edge up, then went along with a little repair kit consisting of a thimble of acetone, a thimble of catalyzed paint, a Q-tip and a tiny 1mm paint brush. At each ding, I wiped it with acetone to remove wax and crud, then dipped my little brush in the paint thimble and put a dab of paint in the ding trying to get about a level amount of paint in there. Then I laid a 1" square patch of wax paper over the ding and held it in place with a 3" piece of masking tape. This kept the paint in place and prevented any runout. Worked slick as a whistle, with most chips disappearing all together. It helps to have the paint as thick as possible (I used AU with 4:1 mixing ratio), then fixed the rock chips with the rather thick paint. After my dings were all fixed, I added 2 parts reducer to the mix and sprayed the wing tips, push-rod exit fairings and a bit on the rood rib area. The sprayed areas had been prepared by filling gouges with Bondo, then body putty in any scratches I could see with a drop lite. Sanded the area to be painted with 220 dry and wiped it down with acetone to remove any wax that survived the sanding. Masked off the area and set my little spray gun with just enough air to atomize the paint, the fan just above zero, and low flow. This reduced the over-spray to almost nothing.
Next day I wet sanded the edge of painted areas with 600 wet and buffed it out a tad. Everything took about 5 hours!
Cheers,
JJ