Today's standard procedures for the repair of fiber reinforced plastics are not optimized for the structural rearrangement of the original material properties. Alongside lap repair and scarf repair, a newly introduced method for the machining of a stepped peripheral zone is discussed. For this purpose, the methods of dry ice blasting and snow blasting as well as the water jet are being investigated. Reference material is carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) compliant to laminates used in the aviation industry. It was found that snow blasting and dry ice blasting were not suitable for this purpose in the experimental set-up. In contrast, the water jet allowed a precise control of the material removal. Subsequently to the feasibility study, a parameter study was carried out to determine applicable parameters for the surface preparation of CFRP. After successful machining of a stepped peripheral zone, a repair experiment was carried out with promising results.