RPetry

Ken, Loose wood fibers with ipe? That is a real long stretch of nonsense. Even with NaOH at full solution, I do not think ipe would degrade enough to have loose fibers. Ipe is one of the hardest woods in nature. Its an acrylic (shame on the writer for putting a solid on ipe). Acrylics are garbage, no worse than garbage because you cannot get rid of them. Cabot's is full of...malarkey. The plastic did not bind to the wood. Is it possible the writer had another finish on the ipe prior to cleaning and staining? Maybe it was another acrylic, and its acrylic fibers! I find it extremely hard to imagine any credence to Cabot's claim.

Plainpainter, I fully agree with Rod and Beth on this. There are some teriffic sodium hydroxide stripper products available, namely HD-80 from Extreme Solutions and F-18 Max from Pressure Tek. What you may pay in cost and shipping can be saved in labor of making your own mixes and possible liability issues. You may want to consider a separate line item materials costs on your estimates and bills. A tough question, that can only be solved from experience. Here is a tip you may want to use. When I go out on estimates, I carry a kit of 7 different spray bottles of strippers. Four of the bottles are commercial sodium hydroxide stripper, mixed at various concentrations. The others are specialized strippers for latex and acrylics. Before taking measurements, try a "best guess" sample on an inconspicuous area of finish. In 15 or 20 minutes, see if the finish has "melted" or degraded. This will give you an educated guess on the difficulty and possible time it may take to strip the job.

Rcihrad, I am gald too cee soemnoe esle hsa a sesne of hmuor

Joe, I'm no Shane or Jim, being just a bleach baby making his first tiny steps towards one more wood cleaner. But I'll offer the following. Some old salts in this business cut their teeth on bleach mixes. At the time, it was all they had. Some still use these mixes with fine results to this day. Then sodium percabonates came along. This was and probably still is all the rage. It was pushed along by good intentions, great looking cleaned wood, and manufacturer marketing. Most of us use sodium percabonates with good results. Now it appears that the dominent trade organization may be advocating the use of sodium hydroxide, more commonly know as stripper, to clean wood. A few are questioning this possiblity and are asking for some evidence to support using a stripper as a cleaner. Some of the decision makers in said trade org. likey built their businesses using bleach mixes. So, as proxy for the Bleach Boys, I'll offer up a possible theme song for consideration. Partial lyrics are included to assist in humming along with the tune. WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN - music and lyrics by The Who ........... There's nothing in the street Looks any different to me And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye And the party on the left Is now the party on the right And the beards have all grown longer overnight I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again No, no! Meet the new boss Same as the old boss

Ray, Oh yeah, Tom will never let me forget. He use to have an 8 x 10 hanging over his desk! Still using the same technique, it works... Don't know if you've been down to ACR recently. The Vogels now have an 8000 sq. ft. showroom and warehouse. Very impressive. Maybe I can purchase your license # temporarily. Corzine & company have taken my money and paperwork on a long ride into the black hole of state gov't. Not that customers will know or care and I expect enforcement to be nil. Good luck!

Ray, Sorry to see you are getting out of the business. We met a few years ago at Tom Vogel's house. If you recall, we were sitting on his deck shooting the breeze. I was the one with the Heineken refreshments. Best of luck on your future endeavors.

Dan, If you get the Makita 9227C buffer, make sure to pickup an extra powercord at a hardware store. The tool can get away from you on flat horizontal surfaces if you are not paying real close attention. And if you use the lock button be careful. The spinning disk tends to cut powercords in an instant.

Scott, That is one big job site. Especially for a water treatment plant. 60' deep in the ground, huge dump trucks, cranes lifting concrete, looks like a dangerous place. Think I'll stick to wood. About the only hazardous things we run into are bees and splinters!

There is a wall of water sliding across Pa. now & headed for Jersey. More rain. Rain today, rain tonight, rain tomorrow. Can't stain. First reschedule of the year coming up. Times like these make 'ya wish you worked at WalMart.

Rich, Touche'. No offense meant and no harm given.

Scott, Yes. I am functional. Questionable, maybe. Please do not take offense to the Georgia reference. It was a "tongue in cheek" poke at another poster that insinuated that woodies that use bleach are low ball scum with rusted pickup trucks that ruin homes. The said poster was from Georgia.

Jon, All kidding aside, your idea has more than great merit. Shane uses a similar technique and look at the photos of jobs he has posted. If you can knock them out like he and his partner, there are dollars to be made. Going into my 5th yr., have only cleaned/restored 3 fences, and they were part of properties with decks. But have one coming up later in the spring, again with a deck as part of the job, that has to be stripped. Time to test the power of prayer....! Shane spilled the beans on the secret bleach handshake. Well, I'll fess up on the Congregation of Cheap Cedar. The Great Wall of China is our shrine. Bats follow us around wherever we go. Members must either smoke or chew tobacco, and drink heavily. Its the only way to keep the da*n bats away. We only hold services on nights of the blue moon on the back roads of Georgia in rusted red pickup trucks full of empty Clorox bottles. The new Cabots SPF acrylic is our official stain. Openings are available. If it does not stop raining, snowing, and blowing so I can get some Ready Seal into some wood, psychiatric intervention is close at hand.

Jon, I think the prep idea is great and the no furring with bleach teriffic. Guess it's that I just don't like doing fences. It also seems to take a lot of time to stain a long fence, especially the shadowbox with all the edges and board tops. Between tarping, moving the tarps, dragging around the Pump Teck sprayer, getiing more stain etc. its a lot of walking and time. You know the drill. Everytime you need something its always on the other side of the stupid fence! But you probably stain twice as much sq. ft. per hr. as a deck. Maybe its just because staining a fence is so friggin' boring. Consider this. If Tom Sawyer had not run away from whitewashing a fence, we would not have discovered the Mississippi River, and Moses would not have been able to sail the ark. Or part the waters. Or something like that. Anyway, it is my firm belief that it is a message from God to Mark Twain to stay away from fence work.

Jon, Must be the color balance of the photo because the unstained fence looks like its covered in Cabot's solid oil, Bluestone color. Good idea for prep. But I find its a lot of labor to stain, especially a shadowbox fence. Don't know if its the lack of attention on detail, the quality of typical fence wood, or something else but fences just don't seem to look as good as a deck job. Aside from the typical lower sq. ft. price, I just don't like doing them.

Roger, When Beth says "dense, and not very porous" that is an extreme understatement. Trying to get any stain into the wood is near impossible. The wood is so hard and dense, weathering does not deteriorate it to a noticeable degree. Ipe will naturally fade to a silver patina, similar to teak. Ipe sinks in water. Ipe has the same fire rating as concrete. Older growth ipe will quickly dull carbide saw blades and drill bits. The wood is near bulletproof. It has also become very expensive in the northeastern US.

Don, Your coworker may have meant trisodium phosphate or more commonly known as TSP.

Bill, Thanks. Rub it in. Friggin' North Carolina where a winter is more like spring. Thats OK, my time will come. One day the wife and I will retire to Costa Rica and grow ipe and mahogany. Ken and FullBlast, Blowing snow in Havertown and Harrisburg? That's just west of me. Great. Was going to at least stage a job to start staining tomorrow. Guess I'll have to keep busy ranting on the bleach thread...

OK Diamond Jim, I'll take the bait...What is "DECK NVY"?

It stinks! 37 degrees F, lots of rain overnight, windy with more showers predicted. Can't stain...

Lou, A light mix of EFC38 with minimal pressure should be fine.

Jarrod, Not true if you are applying the same stain for maintenance. Ready Seal and other paraffinic oil stains never have to be stripped. Some Cabot oil based stains also do not have to be stripped prior to one or two reapplications. Lou, If the Cabot's deck is one of their fine acrylic stains, make sure you don't strip it!

Tim, Here in the states, sodium hypochlorite is commonly known as "bleach". Not sure what you might call it in the mother country. Mixing ratios depend on the concentration in your barrels. In the U.S., normal purchased sodium hypochlorite ratios are 6% and 12%. For wood, a conservative final mix ratio is 1 - 3%. Most add a little liquid dishwashing soap to help in cleaning action. If you search on "bleach" in relation to wood on this site, there is a lot of info, fun, controversy, and speculation. It's a riot! That is an American idiom for "mayhem".

Matt, You may want to try a very hot mix of sodium hydroxide on the grease stains in the wood. Pressure wash or scrub and rinse and try again if needed. Brighten/neutralize when done. Check out the ingredients of Easy Off or other oven cleaners. In terms that a normal person could understand, we are all using oven cleaners to strip decks. Next it will be Easy Off deck cleaner. Gonna' make it even easier to sell Mrs. Homeowner on sodium percarbonate or even bleach based wood cleaners. One other suggestion. Schedule that deck over Easter weekend. Maybe the dead will rise again. The before and after pics could be a real sales tool. Take plenty.

Matt, That is the ugliest, most abused deck and structure I have ever seen. Where is the toothless guy with the banjo? Be careful when working on it, looks ready to fall down. Post after photos when done. You'll win hands down.

Reed, Things are going great in Jersey. Spring is finally here, and work began 2 days ago. Finshed up on a stripper this morning... she sure looked better after than before, and starting on a Bleach Blond this afternoon! What man could ask for anything more? Bookings are the best in my short time in the business. Scheduled up to the end of May. I hope you have a good season. Beth was starting a "Deck of the Month" fun contest somewhere on the board. You should submit that muti-level monster that you posted last year on Brian's site. Gotta go, the blond bombshell is awaiting...