Many coatings have different tack-free times. Some say to wipe off after 30 seconds, some say to wipe off after one minute, some say to wipe off after two to three minutes, and still others say five minutes or more. While we recommend following the manufacturer's recommendations, tack-free times may vary depending on your environment. Heat, humidity, temperature, wind, etc. will all affect the surface dry time of the coating. The same ceramic coating can be applied very differently in Florida than in California conditions. In this article, we describe the benefits of testing with any ceramic coating. This will give you an accurate time frame of how long the coating can be left on before you need to wipe it off.
Leaving a coat on a surface longer doesn't necessarily make it last longer or work better or look different. Letting the coating sit on the surface longer will only allow you to do larger sections at a time before you need to wipe the coating off. If your coat has a 5 minute tack free time, you can do one noticeably larger section at a time, then come back and wipe it off. If you have a short amount of time to wipe off one coat, say 30 seconds, you can only wipe off a small portion at a time, which will take longer to wipe off the entire car.
The question is, when can the coating be wiped off? This is a technique you can use to find out, test the coating before using it. To test the coating, apply the coating to a 3' x 3' section of the panel and wait one minute. At the one minute mark, rub off one corner of the square you applied. If that corner rubs off easily, then you know you have at least a minute until you need to wipe off the coating. Then wait another minute -- a total of two minutes have elapsed -- and erase the second corner of the square. The same thing applies here; if it rubs off easily, you know you have at least two minutes before you start wiping off the coating. Wait another minute - now a total of three minutes have elapsed - and erase the third corner of the square to see how easy it is to erase.
Eventually, you'll reach a point where the coating starts to get a little tacky and hard to wipe off. When this happens, you should dial back the wipe time to about 30 seconds to a minute, which is your official tack-free time for that particular coating.
So, with this simple method, you can always dial in the right amount of time before the coating becomes harder to wipe off. Keep in mind that leaving longer on the surface will not make it look better or last longer or perform better, it will just allow you to do bigger sections at a time and get the vehicle to coat faster !
