I wipe on my Helmsman spar with a rag.When you go over the cresting you have a "soak in" time as I call it.You have to wipe over the gold or silver quickly,without going over the first section you did,otherwise if you wipe the section you start with you will wipe the paint right off.This will over coat the paint,and then will be sealed.Gold,silver and copper(My favorite of the metallic colors) are the only ones I've had this issue with.
What I'd like to find out is why my fletchings peel off the arrows after a period of time when using duco over any kind of poly.Still a mystery to me.Fletch tape works fine but not duco.