Originally Posted by rosefarts

I painted a carbon fork. I ruined it. I took a high gloss red paint and sprayed it, several layers. Looked good. Between layers, I'd wet sand I, I think around 1500 grit. I did this several times until it was very uniform. It looked pretty good. Then I sprayed it with a layer of high gloss clear coat and in the next few minutes the entire thing went full on alligator skin. Actually, I don't know the technical term. All the paint cracked uniformly in the same way a mud puddle in the desert dries. After the clear coat dried, the effect sort of settled down but it couldn't be polished or buffed out since the clear coat was covering the cracking.