Painting the Maiden Ship Pt. 4 - F-d Up the paintjob!

At last, the final coat of paint!
   Excitement gathered, and prepped myself for the grand finale of spraying, but - things went horribly wrong. As I applied a medium mist, it looked a little grainy, then as it dried, shrunk and crackled! My tough glossy outer protective coat was a reptiley mess!

   "Orange Peel" is appearently the term for the problem I was having. Could it be I made a mistake choosing the types of paint? Was it too humid? Too hot? Cold?

   Frantically researching (and trying really hard not to panic about my f-d bike) I came to the this conclusion for my malefaction:

   Lacquers are easy to use because the dry almost immediately.The first layers are not very protective, but a base coat of color to be sealed in with a clear outer coat. You can apply as many layers as you wish, the more layers (to a point) the more protection. The re-coating period is the issue here.

Lacquers have a Re-coat period as follows:
-Apply first layer, let try (5-10min)

-RE-COAT within 2 hours to maintain consistent layering.
-After the 2 Hour period passes, you must wait 36-72 HOURS to let those layers cure and apply the next layers! If you apply lacquer between this window, It will eat away at the old, not yet cured layers, and 'shrink'
it into an orange peel looking mess!

How to fix the problem?

   At this point, all you can do is sand of the bad lacquer, and reapply it. Make sure you let it dry before sanding, and wait to reapply the color after the paint that may be left on cures completely, or your gonna have more sanding to do.

This is is where I left off, so this is where I will leave you until the next chapter; (hopefully) the final (fixed) finished paint job...
TBC...