RPetry

Matt, Its the cleanout each time if you are using both chems and stains that is time consuming and just a pain in my opinion. I hate using our airless for solid oils just for this reason. As I mentioned, our Decker 5'er is only used for Ready Seal stains. As it is a non drying oil, it never gets flushed or cleaned out for the entire season. At the end of the year, we run mineral spirits through it for awhile, it gets antifreezed, and put to bed for the winter. Easy, fast, efficient. Plus, I'm lazy!

Kevin, They are fiber 3M defelting pads, I don't know, maybe 12" in diameter? Used on a Makita 9227C polisher, that rotates at setable RPM. Maybe "burnishing" is the wrong word. But generated heat from overuse was probably a problem, especially with cedar. Net effect was like a high grit sanding. The paraffinic oil went into the cedar fine, but the resins and pigments at the surface lost their "grip" in areas after about 9 months.

Matt, My Decker 5'er is going on its 4th year and has been a real workhorse. Have never used it for chemicals, only Ready Seal stains. Shurflo units for chems and an airless for our once in a blue moon Cabot's solid oil job. One tip you may find worthwhile. Do not use the fold down handle to secure your bucket, keep it raised for easy movement of the unit. Get a proper length heavy duty bungee type strap (look closely at my pic) to strap the 5'er onto the unit. I use a large marine type battery and generally take it out to lift the unit into the truck. If the ramps are down for the pressure washer, we can wheel it up with the battery installed. Oh, one more tip. Without a product bucket or battery installed, the decker is very unsteady and tips over easily. Cracked a manifold last year when it "rolled" over, pump side down.

Matt, Maybe I can help. Refer to this picture. This is the rear of my unit. First, disconnect the quickconnect on your setup where the primer bulb intake hose is connected to the return hose (left bottom of your picture). Your screened filter quick connects to the primer bulb hose female connector (not shown in my pic). If not its probably not a big deal, depending on the quality of your stain. Anyway, stick the return hose (shown in my pic as the metal end looped and terminating to the right of the primer bulb) into your 5 gal. stain bucket, along with the inlet or draw hose (that at the end of the primer bulb). Attach the included 30 or 50 foot hose and trigger gun, which I assume you have done in your picture. Prime the pump with the bulb. The on / off switch I am sure you have found. To the left of my pic, is a threaded brass kind of nut, facing the ground. Turning this adjusts the pressure, as indicated on the gauge. Just up and to the left of that is a 2 way petcock, with the small handle show in my pic parallel to the ground. This position feeds pressurized pump fluid to your gun. Straight down bypasses the gun and recirculates the pump fluid.

I generally avoid cross posting between boards, but cannot do much more for a while. Spend a fair amount of time writing, and the content is germane to this thread topic. If anyone cares, the original thread is on Bob's P.T. State board at Bad Experience at ESPRODUCTS. Shane is on the money. There are a lot of suppliers of wood cleaners, strippers, and neutralizer/brighteners. Truth be told, there is not a whole lot of difference between products. They are all sodium percarbonate, sodium hydroxide, or oxalic / citric based and in my experience, vary little in quality or effectiveness. Exterior wood stains are different. First, stain costs in wood restoration are by far the most out of pocket material cost a contractor faces. Second, the appearance, lifetime, and especially maintenance labor costs of a restoration company's primary stain defines that company. Changing is not easy to do. Done it once in 6 years and hope to never change my bread and butter stain again. Celeste said: Care to name names? You cannot be referring to Ready Seal. If so, spill the beans and we will go on from there. Grab a favorite refreshment and let me tell you two stories. In now 4 years of using Ready Seal exclusively on softwoods, we have had two problems, both with my favorite love/hate wood, cedar. The most recent, the first job of this year that we started stripping at the end of March. 12 yr. old WRC, with some foul, deep old mildew stains, most likely the ancient Behr's mildew lawsuit problem and some failing CWF on top. After prepping, customer selects light brown, generally a terrific looking stain on cedar, but tough on old, knotty, multi stained cedar. Half the deck gets nearly full sun, half is shaded most of the day. Half the deck is trashed by UV over many years, half the cedar is in ok shape. Problem. Color match with the light brown on the two sections of wood. Solution is Peirce, the sales manager for RS. Email him photos, he calls and diagnoses the problem, and gives us a solution. One more quick light app on the UV wood of RS, and a very quick mineral spirits rub in, and this tough job is finished. I'm happy, the customer is thrilled, we are payed, and I get referalls. And make decent net on the job. Problem. Burnished cedar. Two years ago, older WRC deck, new owners of the home. Previous owner or handyman literally poured what looked like CWF over the wood twice. I mean gobs of thick, dryed stain over much of the horizontals and built in benches. Stripped with a hot NaOH twice. Still thick stain over much of the wood. Pull out the Makita and go at it. Went through 20 3M defurring pads on maybe 500 sq. ft. of wood. Lay down 2 light apps of RS med. brown and we are done. Get a call late winter the following year. "Some spots on our deck are faded, very little color left" Go over and sure enough, the customer is correct. Call Peirce. He has me explain the full restoration process, from start to finish. Peirce figures it out. We "burnished" the cedar, in other words hitting the cedar very hard by going through that many defelting pads was like sanding at 200 grit. Came back that early spring, with a quick clean with bleach, and a light reapp of RS oil, problem solved. Problem more than solved. Five days later, UPS drops 5'ers of med. brown RS that I never ordered. Never paid for. This was not a RS problem, it was a Windsor WoodCare prep problem. That is more than customer service, its an unacknowleged thanks for using our product. Woodies all depend on our stain manufacturer. Stain choice is a huge part of our operations and quality, availabilty, product longetivity, manufacturer service, and ease and labor cost of maintenance are the primary business considerations. In short, our stain choice is what defines us. ESI and WoodTux may be the best thing for hardwoods since the old Aussie oil. Actually, maybe Ready Seal is. Started testing this year. Regardless, if ESI has got a great product, show me. Has not happened yet on two tries. Just go back to the stain that all of experienced contractors raved about last year and we will give it one more shot. But please, if at all possible, get the formulas down and ship stable and consistant, out of the can working, product.

Scott, If you do not have the warm honey gold in stock as Beth suggested above, you may want to contact ESI on Monday. I think you can go to local paint retailers and purchase various pigments that are compatible with WTW. This may allow you to tint the stain to nearly any color you need. For others working with the spring batch of WTW that has drying problems, I can report on ipe' horizontal floor boards. Exposed to afternoon sun, a small ipe' porch was fully cured (ie: not tacky and walkable without leaving sneaker "waffle" marks) approximately 70 hours after initial application with lambswool. This is with mid 80 to near 90 F. daytime temps over the period and 4 oz. of Japan Drier / gal. of WTW. Also, last night a thunderstorm with very heavy rain came through the area without marking the nearly cured stain. Looks good.

Ken, you said: There is a big disconnect from what you were told and what I am seeing. You can confirm this as you are about 40 miles from me. The daily high temperatures these past 4 days has been 80, 86, 91, 89 F., with fairly low relative humidity. Aside from the thunderstorm last night, no rain. I have WTW with added 4 oz. / gal. Japan Drier that was applied this past Tuesday that was still tacky or not fully cured on parts of an ipe' balustrade as of yesterday. Top of the handrail mostly cured but the vertical spindles and fascia was not. Unless "hot" weather in Missouri is different from "hot" weather in NJ, or ESI's tests were conducted on special woods, someone is not telling the full story.

Celeste says: Had to read this a few times before even beginning to understand any possible meaning. This cannot be right, the stain is still in development after two or three years and it's "features" are being determined by an ad hoc committee of contractors? You cannot be serious. Yet in my few experiences with the product, it possibly explains things. Two years this Nov. ordered my first WTW for a pressure treated job. Product was very thick, poorly integrated that needed a lot of mixing and thinning, and was a pain to apply. On the plus side, it was usable on "wet" wood, ie: moisture content over 12%. This is NJ in mid November where no wood will dry out for RS. The stain cured fine. Did a job in the neighborhood earlier this spring and was disappointed on the lack of remaining product on the deck floor after ~ 18 months, but the customer still seemed happy and I was able to complete an early winter job that year. Now, 18 months later, order a 2nd bucket of WTW for an ipe' job. By look and "feel", a completely new product. But as a contractor, I have to do the testing. The stain does not cure correctly. Get some Japan Drier and test again. The stain does not cure overnight but does seem to dry better. Start actually using it in production on a paying job. Three days later it is still tacky, even with 4 oz. of Japan Drier / gal. of WTW. Yesterday, had to strip off half the deck floor and start again. Have a separate ipe' porch that will eventually have to be stripped after the customer's party this Sunday. A job that should have run no more than 5 calendar days is turning into a 2 week fiasco. I do not necessarily mind, always seems to be one job a season that takes way longer than anticipated and you net pennies instead of dollars. I consider these jobs normal continuing education tuition. What I do object to is being an unwilling participant in stain manufacturer's R&D test, at my and my customers time and expense. Look, ESI has had WTW on the market for over two, maybe over three years now. It should have been stable and consistant by now. With all the rave reviews here on TGS, the stain must have been a good product at some point. Please get back there and keep it there. Maybe some wood contractors will be willing to try WTW again if they have faith in the product.

The Great Bleach Debate was the best thread in the wood catagory on TGS for all time. Bar none, hands down, no question. Humor, bashing, fun, furious responses, some decent science, some silly contentions, wacky ideas, name calling, wife beating, that thread in its original, unaltered form had it all. Memorable.

Jarrod, Thanks for the input, 24 hours in normal warm conditions is the expected setup time? Probably longer on hardwoods I would guess, but that timeframe seems reasonable certainly for softwoods. Care to let us know about the countdown? Please do not go postal on us.

Kevin, I think we may be at cross words here. It is my unsubstantiated understanding that ESI may have used less quantity of drier in this problem batch to allow more setup time for less experienced contractors and possibly the consumer market. This is heresay, not fact. I was able to speak with Russell on the cell two days ago. I described the problem, he suggested the 3 - 4 oz. of Japan Drier as a "fix" for this stain batch. I did not ask him why the stain did not perform as designed. I did and do not care, just want to get this friggin' job done and go back to trying to make a meager living. I'm not mad or disgusted. New stain on an oxalic prepped wood, two combined new processes on ipe', of all woods. Taken a bath before on a single job and will again. I'll make it up in a few weeks. Small bump in the road. Actually glad for this WTW ipe' job. It will give me a benchmark on RS and ipe'. For my customer and potential new customers, just hope it works on hardwoods as advertised.

Kevin, My knowledge of chemistry is simple. My spelling and eludication is even worse. Quality is the wrong work, Quantity is the correct word. My bad, or me bad, or whatever the kids say today.

Kevin, Your chemistry has my head spinning. Wish I had paid attention to that class in college. Sounds great but honestly, I do not have a clue about what you are saying! Anyway, you said: Far be it for me to defend ESI, and Russell and I are not best buddies. However, I am sure nothing even close to this is going on. Look, ESI produced a batch of stain without the normal quality of probably cobalt drier. Said batch was either not tested, or not tested correctly. According to Ken, who is very close to ESI, this next production run will not have the problem. Contractors are adding Japan Drier to help make up the curing deficiency in this batch of WTW. From what I understand from other ESI contractors, even with the drier additive, the stain is still taking much longer to cure. My point in this thread is that this "fix" appears to be working on ipe', although the curing is much slower that "normal" WTW. Not that I know what normal WTW is, this is the first time in 2 years I have tried to use it.

I especially like the look of a composite deck accented by a no maintenance, plastic balustrade. Real classy.

Scott, Sounds like your order timing might be on the cusp of the WTW formula changeover. If you do not need to use the stain right away, prep and apply some to a sample board. If it does not cure in a "reasonable" amount of time, adding Japan Drier will do the trick. I'm not sure what is "reasonable" or normal curing time for "the old" WTW is as we do not use the stain. Ken, Beth & Rod, Jarrod, Celeste or other contractors who use the stain a lot might chime in here and let us know.

Ken, I agree. Spent an inordinate amount of time testing and tweaking to get the stain to cure. Don't mind on the one hand, as today's WTW is a different animal than 2 years ago and wanted to try it out on ipe'. This customer gave us the perfect opportunity. On the other hand, time, especially this time of the year, is money in lost productivity. But thats ok, I'm just a glutton for taking a bath on trying something new. What will be really interesting is 6 months to a year from now. Have RS on ipe' done earlier in the month on my own ipe' deck. Now have WTW on customer's ipe'. Should be enlightening on longetivity issues, and even more important, ease of maintenance. I will say this. These linseed oil stains are a pain. We just finished a solid Cabot's 7600 series alkylid/oil job, and now WTW. My helper is complaining. Having to mineral spirits and comb brushes, lambswood, clean out the airless, soak the stuff and brush, rinsing and now laundering rags and towels, is a chore. And time consuming. My new truck smells terrible. WTW is not my stain of choice on softwoods, RS clearly put that debate to bed two years ago. But again, that was the "old" WTW. Who knows, WTW may be on exotic hardwoods if it proves itself. That will take a year. There is no question that paraffinics, or at least RS, are by far the best and superior product for softwoods at this time. Though I have never used it, I would assume ESI's WoodRich could be included in this catagory. And those woods are the bread and of most wood contractors business.

This stuff is the saving grace. Pulled my butt out of the proverbial fire. Went back to the job site this morning and voila!, the 4 oz. of Japan Drier / gal. of WTW was still very tacky, but not oily to the touch. Encouraging, as the raw WTW 5 days after a test application was still very oily to the touch in many areas and tacky overall. By this afternoon, 30 hours after application on a section of balustrade, most areas were still tacky but the top of the handrail, wood that gets the most sun, was downright cured correctly and dried! Eureka! Knocked off the rest of the balustrade, finished an ipe' front porch, and started on the floor. This might even be dried and cured for the customer's party on June 3rd. Naturally, did not promise anything but very encouraging. Will knock out the remainder of the floor and some stair risers/treads tomorrow morning. What is very weird is the pressure treated 6 x 6 posts. They were still wet, oily to the touch, and had not even reached the tacky curing stage yet. Also, the warm honey gold on the wood looked terrible. But I have no worries. Maybe it will color out better with curing and who cares, its friggin' PT posts. The ipe' itself looks great, I like the color and am sure the customer will. So anyone working with this year's spring batch of WTW on hardwoods, I would strongly suggest 4 oz. of Japan Drier per gallon of WTW to get it to dry and cure in a reasonable amount of time.

Rod, We are using lambswool by hand, rubbing on a minimum amount of WTW into the ipe'. Could not put down a thinner coat or less product on the wood. Again, this is ipe'. Yesterday was in the low 80's, today is going up to ~86 F., and the forecast for tomorrow is suppose to be near 90 F., all with low relative humidity. If the stain does not cure in these conditions, what would you suggest?

Diamond Jim, Please send some of those staining sheep down here to Jersey. Afraid I'm gonna' have a big need for a flock in the next day or so. Do they come with a cute little Bo Peep? Now there is a fantasy only a sicko could dream up. Well, I have a customer that demanded WTW be used on his new ipe' deck. I offered alternatives, but complied to his wishes, wanting to try the product again. Looks like his big deck party on the 3rd may have to be inside the house. From what I have read here, discussed on the phone with other contractors, and observed so far, the stain will not cure out in time. I'm dreading going back this morning and finding that the Japan Drier did not help in curing. Now what, have held off on doing the floor. Jim, I'll call later this AM ie: lamb, mutton, high grade mineral spirits, cute little sheep herders and drier sheets. Something has just got to work for the floor. Just want to get this done right, get paid, and move on to the next job, a clear cedar monster.

Yaz, You may not need the RO formula of RS. Most redwood within the past 20 or so years, from what I understand, is "tree farm" redwood. It is much younger growth, lacking in tannin content of older mature trees. In most cases, regular RS will be fine. Know they use tons of the normal RS in California on redwood. This job was an exception. Old growth, tannin rich, prime redwood. Sand a small patch of wood and put down a test app of regular RS. If the surface color does not turn black within a minute or two, regular RS should be fine for staining. This particular wood turned black within a second on a test of regular formula RS. It is an exception to the rule.

I have done ~ 15 sq. ft. of ipe' with WTW this spring and it is not curing. Friday, 1:00 PM. Lambswooled a very thin coat of unaltered WTW on prepped ipe' as described in a post above. Asked the customer to monitor drying over the Memorial holiday weekend. Today, 8:30 AM. The stain is maybe half dry, depending on the grain pattern of the particular ipe' board, but still tacky. Certainly not cured. This is nearly 4 days after initial application. This is not just my observation, the customer knew before we arrived this morning. Spoke with Russell then mixed up 4 oz. of Japan Dryer to 1 gal. of WTW and started production staining on the balustrade and fascia. Quit the job early to see if it will set up and cure overnight. Hope this works. Aside from applying as is with the Japan Dryer, then going over the whole job with mineral spirits, do not have a clue as to how to proceed if this altered WTW does not cure out in a few days. Actually, do not know if that will work. Anyone have any other alternatives on this spring's WTW on ipe'?

Mr. Apple, No, I still do not see your point. In Florida, or anywhere else, how many people are going to climb a ladder, spray bleach on the roof, and pressure wash off? No doubt there are some. But they would not be first time customers in any stretch. Let 'em do it, let 'em know a few tips, and let 'em suffer. Next time they call you or your professional competitor. Again, we do no roofs, only wood, but it cannot be that different.

Paul, You are in Georgia, I am in New Jersey. Big difference in seasons and climate. I do not work myself or my help into the ground. We need and more than deserve a holiday 3 days off. There is more to life than making a few extra bucks.

Paul, That is not a deck, it's Disneyland! We have been going full guns since the 20th of April, and we are taking a full three days off. Been just a teriffic spring with great weather and lots of work.

To all, Wake up. The world of business has changed. As well as the world of information and egalitarian secrets. Face it, if someone wants to clean their roof or stain their deck, they will downright, no doubt about it, find some good info somewhere on the internet. Thank god for that. We as contractors have all gained great ideas, whether marketing, selling, or performing our trade through this medium. Who cares if someone has the time and interest to read through this or any other board? They are not your first time customers. They may very well be your next customer. If they are a lawyer, engineer, medical worker, plumber, whatever, you think they have the time and interest in doing it again? If they do, they will never be a customer. Otherwise, they have found a local contractor that has some kudos and experience to do a quality job at a fair and honest price.