+1 on that. If I wanted the best brushed on job, I would use primer, sanding between coats, a good, long dry time and follow with a good wax before hanging parts on it and riding with a smile. Don

I rattlecanned a bike once. Went super serious with it, primed it, sanded a bunch, multiple layers, and hung it a safe place for a while while it cured. It looked great, but was thin and easily scrapped up and chipped. It really made me not want to do it again because of the total fragility of the finish, despite doing it right. Maybe if it were a show bike that rarely left the hanger the fragile finish might not have mattered, but this bike was my daily rider and honestly looks pretty bad. I currently have a bike that needs paint desperately. This two part epoxy brush on paint is looking pretty interesting. Any results regarding strength of the paint vs. rattlecan? I assume thicker paint means stronger, but I've been wrong before.

Why not use an automotive primer, & acrylic enamal, brushing it on, sanding between coats, wet sanding and rubbing out the final coat? It might cost a bit more, but its a higher quality paint. I believe you can get it in pints or maybe half pints. I read a book about wood & canvas canoe construction and that is the paint they recomended. Boat paint is another possibility.

Why bother, he said he's gonna powdercoat it eventually. And I have gone the whole primer / wet sand / wait weeks for each coat to dry / "do a really good professional job", etc., and I can tell you that with Rustoleum paint, you're wasting your time, it's not gonna help.

In fact with each new coat you put on you're risking drips, which take weeks to dry enough to sand down, endless waiting and time wasted for nothing.

When you can get results like in the pics above with one brushed-on coat, why bother with all that?

Brushing on a paint job is more work than spraying, be it with rattle can or professional spraying equipment. Brushed or rattle canned, the paint must be allowed to dry for a long time unless you can bake the paint. The hot car is a good idea, but Mrs. Me would get pretty hot if I started using her Honda Civic as a paint drying booth.

Anyway, this is how I Paint A Bicycle With A Brush. Hope it is helpful and thanks for showing some of the bikes that you guys and gals have painted with a brush. Works pretty good, doesn't it and, for what it is worth, for a newbie, a brush job is probably the way to go.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0c868435d9.jpg

Watch for the fumes from that Rustoleum paint, I nearly passed out being in the same room with a frame I had painted days earlier that was still "gassing out". Those fumes are nasty, and the paint gasses out for many weeks, if not months.

A car parked out in the sun is a pretty decent drying booth, just don't drive around with the smelly frame, or you might get a DUI from the fumes.

I have painted a few frames with a brush. Rustoleum probably is the easiest to work with. But I have used Testors also with good results. One of the easiest and quickest methods is using a waterborne alkyd gloss. Soap and water cleanup and very low odor. Also it can be recoated in a couple hours. I painted my classic Volkswagen bus with waterborne alkyd gloss paint. Doesnt have quite the sheen of Rustoleum but the convenience of fast dry and easy clean up is a huge plus.

Another option is to use Rustoleum thinned down a bit in a Preval sprayer. Preval makes a sprayer that is a glass bottle with a propellant cartridge attached. My mechanic uses a Preval for small touch up work on cars. Great results.

Watch some tutorials on youtube. Show cars are being done with Rustoleum. Make it dry faster by thinning. Since your only likely spray booth is outdoors thin it enough it gets half-dry before leaves and dust clog the paint. Multiple coats and the more you sand the better it looks. The thinned paint dries much harder than a normal coat of paint. If you just have to use a brush instead of spray, thinned Rustoleum will drip a lot. Don't worry, just wear gloves and be ready.

Paint needs to dry. If your Rustoleum is not hard dry overnight you have a problem. Oil paint that doesn't dry overnight will not perform well. It will be soft. It will not have much gloss. It will not have accurate color. At worst it will surface dry and a wet layer remains underneath. Paint might dry too slow because the weather is too cold or too wet. Paint will dry too slow every time if you put it on too thick. Just by brushing it thin you can get Rustoleum to dry in two hours. Add some paint thinner and it will dry quick. Paint that dries fairly quickly is stronger and better in every way. It will be thinner and you will need more coats. Extra coats is a lot easier than waiting a week for paint to sort of approximately get dry.

Can't give you that Classtime because it does not exist. When I want paint on a frame I take it to a specialist. Having been a pro painter for 40 years I appreciate the role of a specialist. Getting a first approximation of a pro paint job on a bike frame is going to take me at least five times as long as it would someone who makes it his business. At that rate it's better to pay. Would rather look at a specialists mistakes than my own.

I have painted metal and used some buckets of Rustoleum. Used lots of historic formulations of Rustoleum. Good paint. Dries well. If it needs a week to dry it is too darn thick. The amount you'll put on a bike it doesn't even that much smell. Smells much worse when not drying correctly. When it's dry in an hour the smell starts to clear in an hour. Gone before wife is home? No.

I will have to try thinner coats. Maybe what confused me is when a lot of paints describe themselves as "enamel", which I thought was supposed to be laid on very thick. The Wikipedia article on enamel paint also makes this point clear:

OK, got it.

Rickert, have you ever observed the fading of certain colors when a Rustoleum-painted object is left in the sun for long periods? Do you think a clearcoat would help with that? TYIA.