On Aug 13, 1:33*pm, Oren wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 12:35:33 -0700 (PDT), "





wrote:
On Aug 13, 2:42*pm, Oren wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:39:32 -0700 (PDT), Robert Macy

wrote:
Ok, I give up, exactly HOW am I supposed to patch drywall?

The repair has to be larger than the damage. *Compound should be
feathered out past the local spot. This avoids the "ring". *Build it
up a little at a time for height, but larger in area. As you feather
out from the center the compound should be thinner on the outside
edges. Don't try to fix damage in one try. *Take your time with layers
of compound.

You can feel the difference in smoothness.

Works for me.
--

I don't understand what went wrong. *I've done a lot
of repairs and never had this problem. *Sometimes you
can see a difference between the repaired area due
to difference in the paint being old vs new, the sanding,
etc. *But I've never run into the "ring" problem. *If it
didn't match it was pretty much the whole area.

I'm thinking the OP over sanded the area. Easy to do....put it
on...take it off (compound). Repeat and repeat. It happens until the
skill is learned to feather the compound outward and not over sand the
center.

I've seen the "ring" problem doing auto body repair. *In that case one
can spray primer and see the imperfections, then add more bondo and
feather further out from the center. *Just do not over sand the repair
at the center.

OP can shine a bright light sideways on the wall and see the low
spots.
--

finally!!

it is NOW flat looking. Surprisingly, even a slight 'bump' in the
amount of 0.5 to 1 mil which was extremely hard to find caused the
'island' effect. Turns out that a naturally occurring cross light
along the wall brought the pattern out. Using a flashlight didn't.
Feeling the surface almost didn't. But, it was there. after
aggressively sanding with a BLOCK of wood until the the adjacent
surface was also being bitten into; THEN the wall looks flat.

But I appreciate all these answers.