Rattle can paint job - how long to fully cure?

[mamadirt]

Earlier this year I began renovating an older Subrosa frame - completely stripped, dent filled, primed, rattle canned and lacquered.  After the first attempt, 2 weeks post top colour, someone (papadirt I'm looking at you)  moved the frame from where it was clamped onto some kitchen paper resulting in marking to the paint.  Back to the wet and dry then another couple of layers followed by lacquer a couple of weeks later and it's now looking great. 



Left it a month or maybe longer before fitting the decals, head badge and bottom bracket and since then it's been standing in an unused bedroom but the headtube paint has still marked where it's been resting against a wall    This one is earmarked for our USA vacation home (once the travel ban is lifted  ) and I'm eager to get it packed up ready to ship but worried that bubble wrap or pipe lagging is going to ruin all my hard work.  Any experiences? 

[Midschoolfool]

If you want anything even so much as approaching a custom finish you need to give the paint lots of time to fully cure.

It depends on what you are painting with, but some of the acrylic paints I have used can take up to 2-3 weeks to go hard. Rattle can laquer? may never go fully hard that is why I try to avoid using it where I can.

I painted my bars and fork over a week ago and when I fitted the grips to the bars 2 days back the hair laquer I used to get them on literally turned the paint back to wet. I made a right old mess with that.

I am going to do a full custom paint job soon on my 2hip, and I expect it to take about 2 months with all of the fully hardening time etc. Sadly unless you go 2k there is just no way to get a full cure any faster. You can use an oven or hair dryer but yeah, full cure takes ages. I did a full tutorial here

https://bmxmuseum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=799138

But I was ripped off because none of it was 2k. They just lie. Unless it has an activator button under it? it ain't 2k.

Don't get me wrong it came out really beautiful, but the paint is as soft as a pensioner's turd. I consider myself to be very good at painting. Like, getting on even coats, no runs or sags or anything else but yeah, rattle cans leave a lot to be desired.

Even  an epoxy primer for example is like concrete compared to the crap that comes out of a can.

[mamadirt]

Cheers!  That tutorial is super-useful and the T1 looks awesome