Richard,

You know by now that baking enamel type paint is a thing. Can be a rat hole of possibilities.  But it does rely on the appropriate paint, old days it was oil based enamel type.

Leaving aside jappaning. That’s baked but different.

I don’t know about modern paints and baking.  Certainly body shops bake paint to a degree, not what you were doing though 

Alistair 

> On Jan 2, 2024, at 10:52 AM, Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> OK....here's an oddball one I've never seen discussed....  Suppose you are restoring some small metal part.  You've wirebrushed, sanded, primed, rattle can painted (oil based paint).  I just did such a job restoring an old Bench Vise, and then somehow I got the idea to "oven bake" it.  Man, did that ever turn out great!  You can just feel it somehow.  Finish seems incredibly strong.  I just put parts on a foil covered cookie sheet, and put into 275-300 F oven for 20 minutes; after the fact, I did some Internet snooping and turns out my approach was nearly spot on.  Apparently this enhances the polymers in the paint to weld themselves together somehow.  Where I want to try this again is when I re-finish my Vanagon door handles, I want something perfect and super durable.  I am also thinking of this approach for around the house projects.  Anybody got any experience in oven baking small metal parts?