Well there must be something wrong with your pen because my one works just fine. Perhaps the tips have dried up?

 

+1 on the tooth pick

 

Yeah the tip of my pen might be clogged. The touchup paint dries *fast* in my experience. Fast enough that it can make things difficult at times. As for the toothpick method I've had no luck with that either. Usually I can't get much paint to stick to the toothpick in the first place even if I dip it pretty far into the container. And when I go to put the toothpick in the crack or chip nothing sticks.

 

Well your tookpick has to be one of the sharp ones, if it is just like a stick then you need to take a knife and sharpen it. Don't dip it into the container as it might pick up too much, just get some from the bottle cap or something.

 

I touched up everything on my black Cobra using a duplicolor pen. I just opened it up and used a toothpick to transfer the paint.

You need to be careful wetsanding. If you are sure your car still has factory paint, your clear coat is going to be very thin. You should try to avoid wetsanding all together, but if you have to, go with 3000 and CONSTANTLY check your work and make sure you didn't break through the clear. If you broke through the clear, it'll look like your paint has a blind pimple.

I'd personally recommend against applying any clear. Reason being is that you'll build up the paint so high to begin with, adding clear to it will just build it even higher and by the time you are done wetsanding it level, you'll have removed it all anyway. You can try building up the paint and making it flush with clear, but it's going to take so much effort and you really only have one shot at doing it right.

Make sure you get yourself a SOFT wet sanding block, it'll be rubber or a soft plastic. Don't get one of the big heavy 3m sanding blocks. You can wet sand by hand, but the uneven pressure from your hand/fingers is going to create a mess of uneven scratches in the paint and the finished product will end up looking like a pastel painting in direct light.

 

I wet sand by hand and it seems to come out just fine...I think the trick to doing it right is very light strokes and plenty of water.

I remember the first time I tried this was on a rather large chip on the rear left side of my car where the C pillar meets the fender and the trunk. My touch up work was still sitting pretty high so I kept wet sanding and I guess I got impatient and didn't use as much water and gentleness as I should have and I started to see silver again...I almost exploded