yes the paint will last a few months, just don't put the mixed paint with mineral spirits back into the can. it's not the # of layers that determine the gloss, just how well you wetsand it and polish it, i like to paint the minimum amount of layers so that the paint is as thin as possible and still enough thickness so that you don't wetsand thru the paint and can polish it nice. it only gets better the more effort you put into wetsanding and polishing, so in effect it looks as good as the effort you put into it. alot of people have asked if a particular paint is the same as tremcled, and the answer is i don't know, i only know the tremclad, i think those people should expirement with the process and post their results here so we can know. my question for you exit1965 is how much effort did you really put into your test peice? you had running issues in the begining and sanded it with coarse paper ect...now that you know the process do you thing you would get exponentially better results now that your confortable with the process? i think so, if you take your time and wetsand really well and then polish i'm sure you would have a really nice paint job.