Two or three days after spray-painting the beak I started noticing slight bumps in the paint, at first I chalked it up to my shoddy work and continued on with the fur, not suspecting much.
A day or two later I noticed, that the bumps had transformed into large cracks in the paint, but because it looked like a scrape, I also ignored it and thought, that I might have scratched it when I was handling it.
After inspecting the beak further I noticed, that it wasn't just one "scrape", there were cracks forming all over ...
The next step was doing some research on Google to find out what could've happened, and how I could prevent it from happening again.
Sadly, I couldn't find a good answer, because most people with similar issues either didn't prime the work piece or used the wrong paint for the material, which wasn't the case with my beak.
I decided to contact the company I bought the spray paint from, they ought to know best, and might have tips to prevent this from happening again.
The company was very helpful and even offered me to send me a much more expensive and suitable paint for free!
In case any of you need paint, I can really recommend this company: https://www.tristarcolor.com/

The paint experts explained to me, that it was most likely a mixture of errors I made.
Firstly, I spray-painted the beak outside at very low temperatures, which can cause the paint to dry much slower because the solvents in the paint gasify at a lower rate.
Because I applied clear coat on top of the base paint, which most likely hasn't fully dried yet, it would further prevent the base paint from drying correctly causing stress from the two paints drying at different rates.
Paint on solvent base shrinks naturally while the solvents gasify, usually this doesn't cause too many issues, but in conjunction with the clear coat which was drying quicker, the stresses and contractions were large enough to pull the paint apart.
As stated before, the company selling me the paint, offered to send me a free can of 2K spray paint, which would prevent this from happening again.
I was using 1K spray paint before, this paint is based on solvents and dries by gasification of these solvents, which causes the shrinkage.
2K paints on the other hand dry chemically without gasification, thus without shrinking in the process, the only downside is, that the paint and the hardener have to be mixed before painting, this will cause the drying process inside the spray can itself.
That's also why the spray can looks so odd, the top portion contains the paint, while the bottom portion contains the hardener, both are mixed by pressing in the little stem on the bottom of the can, starting the chemical reaction.
The only real downside of these paints is, that the paint will have fully hardened within 6h. which means, that the can is completely unusable after a couple of hours, and that the paint will harden inside the can.

After sanding down the beak and removing any bumps and cracks, I prepped it and spray-painted it with the new 2K paint, following every step listed on the can as close as possible.
First I lightly dusted the beak with paint, waited 30 min., and then added the first and second coat of paint.
After letting it dry for a day, I was very pleased with the result, and because I chose a darker shade of brown, it looked even better than before ;)

Before this ordeal, I've never heard of 2K spray paint, and I've also never seen it at home improvements stores, so I'm kinda glad it happened, because I've learned a bit more about spray-painting and the different kinds.
I also really like the darker shade of brown, so all in all, I'm kinda happy, that I fucked up the first time xD


Part #9: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/59762869/