With acrylics the finish is touch dry within minutes, barring retarders and such. But certainly the same day. This, even though full cure to the depths of the paint will be 3-4 days. But you certainly can work with the model before that few days. In some cases minutes.
Lacquers in model scale finishing is fast drying. In either case and speaking for myself, I use a dehydrator, either finish type can be safely worked with after 30 minutes dehydrating. Non the less, some of my builds wait years to get back to assembly ! Anyone is safe saying that I'm in no rush. At all.
You can research online, scale effect of model finishes and come up with much more than we can post in a thread, both in terms of sizabl/managable context and knowledge, at least speaking for myself and how it relates to reflection.. I started to write on it but concluded I was scratching the surface and it was about all I knew lol !! So I backed it off and wrote this instead. Or maybe someone else can sum it up with fewer words and say more than I could.