How to get rid of paint lines from tape?

[tom5170]

I was in the process of fixing a crack in my bumper and repainting it. I fixed the crack (or thought so), and then repainted the whole bumper.

As I was moving the bumper from my backyard, to the front yard, it hit my gate and developed a slight crack right on the old crack. So I basically sanded that spot down, applied some more epoxy, sanded it down, taped it off, reprimed the spot, then repainted, then clear coated.

But when I took the tape off (i'm a noob), there was tape lines, it's very noticeable and looks like crap. I thought I could use one of those touch up pens, and kinda 'scrape' at the line or make it flush, and then use that small brush so that's what I did, and all that brush did was make a wider line that is above the surface now.

So what can I do? Can I just sand down that whole area again 'til it's even and just spray some dupli color, and then some clear coat? I used dupli color perfect match for the bumper.

 

[Explicit_Spade]

Have you tried buffing it?

I would just reprep the whole bumper and repaint the whole thing.

 

[Swiggles]

Sand it... I saw a trick on one of the car tv shows, you flip half the porc of tape over, but don't fold it leave it round, then use another piece of tape to hold that down. The idea is to let the paint fade into the area instead of right on top of the tape leaving a line.

 

[tom5170]

Well I sanded that one spot down flush. Sanded out the lines, and sprayed down 2 coats. It looks way better and blends in with the rest. Now I need to just clearcoat it soon

 

[idrivejunk]

I'm late to the party but yep you figured it out. Sucks to have to make a spot repair on something you just painted but I can't say I didn't see it coming. Glad you got the color blended out. Clearing the whole bumper now instead of just that spot will help your re-repair stay less visible longer and would eliminate the PITA of trying to blend the clearcoat edge out with a buffer.