Repairing Chipped Paint?

[funkify]

I dropped one of my guitars recently. Horrible mistake which I am embarassed to admit happened... please don't rag on me for it as I have suffered quite enough emotional distress already... as you can imagine I nearly had a heart attack! The corner of the headstock hit the carpet in my home pretty hard. Fortunately the headstock was not damaged at all, but the accident left the guitar with a crack in the paint in the neck joint area which wraps around from the back of the neck to the side of the fretboard where it meets the top of the guitar's body. There are some small spots along the crack where paint chips came off of the urethane finish -- a couple in the back, and a small one right along the fretboard binding in front.

This guitar has a set mahogany neck in a mahogany body, and the neck joint itself seems fine, miraculously (I was so worried I'd ruined my favorite guitar). After 3 weeks it seems structurally solid, holds a tune, and plays just as great as before. My theory is that there was enough "spring" in the wood to keep the neck joint from being damaged, while the urethane finish was more stiff like a shell and thus wasn't quite so lucky.

Anyway now on to the point, what should I do to fix the areas where the paint chipped off, as well as prevent any more paint from chipping off? Honestly I don't need it to be perfect because this is a guitar that I never, ever want to sell. But I don't want it to be noticeably damaged either, and I definitely don't want any further chipping to occur along the crack. I was thinking of using car touch-up or model car paint, but before I did anything that could be dumb I wanted to ask here first as I am defintely no expert on paint.

I searched the forum and didn't find anything that seemed to apply, but if anyone could offer helpful advice on what to use and how to go about patching this up, I would be EXTREMELY grateful. Thanks in advance for any helpful advice that any of you out there can offer.

Edited July 16, 2007 by funkify