The Times, They are a-Changin’

Even in wooden ending.

One of my favourite songs again within the 1960s was Bob Dylan’s, The Times, They are A-Changin’. This theme applies at the moment to what’s taking place in wooden ending.

It’s pure for us to imagine that the way in which issues must be are the way in which they have been in our youth or younger maturity. Change all the time brings with it the need for adjusting. I’ve needed to make numerous changes in my wooden ending. The essential areas are finishes, solvents, spray weapons, paint strippers, and adjusting to the widespread consolidation that has been occurring.

Finishes

The greatest change is the introduction of water-based finishes and the gradual disappearance of nitrocellulose lacquer and polish. Actually, simply utilizing the time period “varnish” is turning into old-fashioned. There aren’t many varnishes left. They have been changed by “polyurethane,” which is a sort of varnish and which was broadly disparaged within the woodworking neighborhood in its early days as a “plastic,” as in “I don’t allow plastics into my shop.” (Actually, all varnishes and lacquers are plastics.)

Back to water-based finishes. Despite producer labeling attempting to make you assume they are identical to lacquer or varnish, they are a completely new and totally different kind of end. The huge purpose, in fact, is the inclusion of numerous water. Water raises wooden grain, is extra climate delicate than natural solvent, will increase the issue of making use of ornament (stains, glazes, pore fillers and toners), and causes rust on steel cans.

Industry has transformed considerably to water-based finishes with the intention to adjust to VOC laws, particularly native laws the place their factories are situated. But these finishes haven’t caught on practically as a lot within the newbie and small-shop woodworking neighborhood as a result of they are harder to make use of than solvent-based finishes and don’t look as good on high quality woods.

Solvents

2. In order to make “paint thinner” compliant with strict VOC guidelines, manufactures add quite a lot of acetone, which is an “exempt” solvent. The downside is that acetone assaults many widespread finishes, because it’s doing right here on this lacquer end.

The change within the availability of solvents hasn’t occurred in every single place but, nevertheless it’s coming. The driving power behind the change is air air pollution, which is contributed to by VOCs. So some areas of the nation, particularly California and components of the Northeast and Midwest, are limiting the sale of sure solvents.

The ending solvents most affected are lacquer thinner and mineral spirits (paint thinner), although denatured alcohol has simply joined the listing in California. To make these solvents compliant with VOC legal guidelines, producers have added quite a lot of acetone as a result of this solvent is far much less polluting than the M.E.Ok., toluene, xylene and petroleum distillate
historically used. Acetone can be utilized as a result of it’s categorised as an “exempt” VOC.

Acetone has two traits, nonetheless, that you simply want to concentrate on as a result of it modifications how lacquer thinner and paint thinner work. First, acetone evaporates very quickly, so you could not have as a lot time as you have been used to. Second, acetone is a really robust solvent that dissolves or blisters quite a lot of dried coatings (finishes and paints). So wiping over a coating, for instance, to take away wax, with reformulated paint thinner might assault that coating. Read the components on the can to examine that acetone isn’t included.

Spray Guns

Spray weapons have nearly completely modified for the reason that early 1990s in response to the need to place much less end into the air. Traditional spray weapons function off of air beneath excessive stress, which causes quite a lot of the coating to bounce again off the goal and be exhausted into the ambiance.

3. There are two sources of air for HVLP spray weapons: a compressor and a turbine. HVLP spray weapons are out there that may be operated off of both. Some manufacturers might be operated off of each.

To cut back the bounce again, spray weapons have been developed to ship a tender spray. At first, these weapons operated simply off of a turbine, which is sort of a reverse vacuum cleaner. In truth, previous Kirby vacuum cleaners way back to the 1930s got here with a spray-gun attachment. Slowly, spray-gun producers found out find out how to design their spray weapons to provide a tender spray with compressed air. Both the turbine and compressed air spray weapons are known as “high-volume, low-pressure,” or HVLP. Not counting airless and air-assisted-airless spray weapons, nearly all spray weapons offered at the moment are HVLP as a result of they decrease prices by lowering waste and produce simply pretty much as good outcomes.

4. Early HVLP. Kirby vacuum cleaners got here with an HVLP-gun attachment way back to the 1930s. It was used to spray soapy water on carpets. The expertise has been improved rather a lot since then.

Unlike the difficulties adjusting to water-based finishes and the disappearance of some very helpful solvents, adjusting to HVLP spray weapons is pretty simple.

Paint Strippers

5. The paint or end being stripped makes all of the distinction. Here I’m stripping lacquer with simply lacquer thinner. It would have had little success on oil paint, polyurethane or a catalyzed end. Manufacturers of stripping alternate options to methylene-chloride strippers, which have been faraway from the patron market, don’t inform you the coating being stripped of their advertising demonstrations.

I’ve written plenty of instances, each on this journal and on-line, opposing the compelled removing of methylene chloride from paint strippers. Unfortunately, this has occurred. First, beneath stress from client teams, big-box shops have stopped promoting strippers containing methylene chloride, then the EPA issued a ruling prohibiting the sale of methylene-chloride strippers within the client market. Methylene chloride is by far the best solvent for eradicating paints and finishes.

So as producers proceed to provide an increasing number of sturdy paints and finishes, their removing will probably be an increasing number of troublesome. This will end in elevated injury to the wooden, which will not be a difficulty with most fashionable trim and furnishings, however it would cut back the worth of previous surfaces, particularly vintage furnishings.

Consolidation

You might not have seen, however there are many fewer firms supplying ending merchandise now than there was once. This has occurred partly due to bigger firms shopping for smaller ones and partly due to firms merely going out of enterprise. It seems that every one paint and end firms are being consolidated into simply three: Sherwin-Williams, PPG and Akzo Nobel. The result’s that we’ve got a lot much less selection than we used to have.

The most blatant instance is the present dominance of Minwax, owned by Sherwin-Williams. This firm was tiny again within the days after I was making and restoring furnishings. At that point I used two manufacturers of stain that don’t exist any extra. One was an oil-based wiping stain that intently imitated the colours on vintage furnishings and the opposite was a “lacquer” stain that I added to lacquer to tweak the colour to get a more in-depth match.

It’s been exhausting to seek out replacements. Adjusting to vary is troublesome.