Okay, just dinkin' around earlier today, and used an old "trick" that I don't recall seeing on the site before.
This will come in handy for any of you that have a "high spot" in your paint that you want to "knock down". What I'm talkin' about here are little "pimples" that are usually caused by a speck of dirt under the paint film. Or it could be that you're obsessing about some of those rock chips on the nose of your rig and you're dropping some touch up in the "crater" to fill it in so it doesn't look so bad. In filling these chips you may have had mixed results, not full enough to really hide the chip because you were too afraid to "overfill" it. Or you did overfill it, and it looked like a colored wart. Then you might have tried sanding it down, but that removed some paint from the surrounding area too...........and you were really worried about sanding through to primer!!!
So here's a way to knock down those "nibs". Be aware, if you're doing this to a dirt speck under the color, you may end up exposing the chunk by removing too much paint, so there's a learning curve on thes buggers. As for the chips on the front (or anywhere else for that matter), the goal IS to overfill the crater so you can smooth it back to match the surrounding material, without damaging that surrounding paint.
This will require just two "tools"; a single edge razor blade and a piece of abrasive sheet (sandpaper to some of you). Now I'm not much of an artist, but I've made a crude line drawing to help illustrate what I'm describing here (see below). Take the razor blade and strop it across the abrasive sheet while you have the sheet on a flat surface. Only do one side, stroking in one direction while holding the blade at approximately a 30-45 degree angle. A couple passes across the abrasive will form a "curl" edge on the blade (see exagerated rendering). Now you have a great little tool that will act like a plane to shave down that high spot in the paint. With a little practice you'll get a good feel for when to stop once you're even with the surrounding paint film. It takes some care to make sure you hold the blade edge parallel to a flat surface so that you don't do any gouging with the corners. On a crowned surface you may have to work back and forth across the "face" of the "bump" to get an even cut. Usually this works pretty quickly, so don't zone out or you may go farther than you intended. If you feel the "cutting" edge becoming less effective, just strop it again.
Follow with a little rubbing compound and, if you did it right, it will be very difficult for anyone to see where you did your repair.
Experienced paint folks are probably aware of a small device available commercially to do the same thing. It resembles a small file, about 1" square mounted to a block. But hey, you've already got a box of these blades right?
