Russell Cissell

Bill, I would say that your best bet would be to order it from Sun Brite Supply. They are closer to you so it will take less time in transit and should save you money on shipping. I know they plan to stock tint kits this year and should have them in stock for early spring. If you would like to discuss the features and benefits of Wood-Tux WET or any of the ESI product line, I would be happy to schedule a product Q & A chat with Beth right here on TGS. If you give me an idea of what day and time you would like to have it, I can make the arrangements. Have you ever attended one of the chat event hosted here on TGS? Russell Cissell 636-288-8512 imrcc1@aol.com

I suppose that in theory you could use any tint system that is compatible with an oil based stain. We recommend that you use the ESI Tint system sold specifically for Wood-Tux WET. Our tint package consists of two pints of pure pigment. The kit also comes with several easy to use measuring devices. The two colors that we send you are red and black. By adding red, black or both you can make any color from dark walnut to a bloodwood red. Remember because this is a transparent system the color of the wood will determine the final look of the finish. Because we send you the highest quality pigment, it takes very little to get the job done. In most cases a squirt or two per gallon is just right. For instance a nice brown sugar color is achieved by adding a squirt of black per gallon. If you would like a dark western cedar look you can try two squirts of red and a half squirt of black. It really couldn't be easier to use. The key is there are no rules. Each tint kit will provide enough pigment to color over 100 gallons of stain. For larger jobs the same tint system is available in gallons. Some contractors believe that having their own custom color is what separates them from their competition. hope that helps! Russell Cissell imrcc1@aol.com 636-288-8512

In my experience all products have their strengths and weaknesses. Some contractors will choose to learn how to use several different products. Other contractors will choose to work with one or two products and then limit their work to jobs that are appropriate for the products they use. You will hear arguments from all points on the spectrum. Often the arguments are legitimate because no similar product can honestly solve all of the problems. Even within each class of products there is a range in quality and performance so I try to avoid generalizations. I've learned one lesson in music that applies to so many things in life, including wood finishing. In the hands of an amateur, even the finest instrument will make little more than noise, however in the hands of a master even a toy can produce a masterpiece. Best of Luck! Russell Cissell imrcc1@aol.com 636-288-8512

Just a quick note to let contractors know that Extreme Solutions, Inc. product information is available at: www.ESProducts.net If you are looking for information on HD-80, EFC-38, Citralic Brightener/Neutralizer or Wood-Tux stain this is the site for you. In addition to product information you can find manufacturers promotions listed here. There are currently three promotions in effect and three ways to SAVE BIG on your spring order! We are looking forward to an excellent wood restoration season. We are very excited to see how the improved Wood-Tux Wet formulation is going to help contractors maximize their profitability. If you have any questions about Wood-Tux WET feel free to give Russell Cissell a call or shoot me an E-mail. The official announcement is a week or so off, but I have most of the pertinent information on hand now.

If you are planning to back brush anyway, you might consider switching to a flood jet tip to increase your overall application speed.

I swear I know how to count to three, I just haven't quite figured out how to use a computer.

Patrick Don't be afraid. It is really very easy to use. What if everyone wanted their own color car? Russell Cissell imrcc1@aol.com 636-288-8512

Working with exotic hardwoods such as Ipe is not the same as your typical pressure treated pine or cedar deck. The maintenance cycle is much different. Those discerning customers who choose a premium grade lumber will often treat it like a piece of fine furniture. It is not uncommon that you would return every six months to check up on their deck. Most exterior finishes will not perform well at all with a very dense species of wood. Wood-Tux WET is among those finishes that perform beyond the six month mark on Ipe, Cambara and other very hard woods. With regular cleaning and maintenance Wood-Tux WET will keep these beautiful exotic woods protected and looking their best for years. When you use Wood-Tux WET on softer species of wood, such as those more typical of deck and fence construction, you can expect the maintenance cycle to be considerably longer.

Lance What is your end goal? What are you trying to accomplish? I've seen the opposite of what you describe done many times. For instance on a machine with a 13 HP Honda, If you take a downstream injector and fit it with a male QC on the inlet and a female QC on the outlet side you can drop in a 0 degree tip with a #20 orifice. Now if you place that rig at the end of your lance or directly into your gun it will perform like an X-Jet

If you seal the flatwork you can save both time and chemicals on the subsequent cleaning. If you can demonstrate a long term savings to the management company, that could be a nice upsell. It sounds like you are in a position of trust with them. If you haven't already, it wouldn't hurt to write them a proposal. If I were in your position I would take the time to call Jay Tarantino. I've known him for a number of years, he's got a genuine passion for concrete sealing technology and he represents many of the finest choices in surface treatment products. Be prepared to take notes if you call him. I've learned from talking with Jay most everything he says is practical and applicable. He understands the business of concrete sealing as well as the technology. Jay Tarantino The TARA Distribution Group 1-740-389-9600

Is there a specific reason you see the need for hot water? The solid stain, like paint will serve to protect the wood to some degree. Cold water is always safer.

The first thing you must do is relax. You've got this covered, you are a professional. They know this and thet is why you've been asked to bid. Next check yourself. Quiet your mind and be very honest with yourself about everything you know. Make notes that reflect as closely as possible what was discussed in your conversations. Try and recall the subtal feelings that you had during the actual conversation. Sometimes after the fact, we can get excited and forget about what our gut told us. Treat your bid as if it were any single project. Sometimes we have the tendency to want to discount heavily for large jobs. There is rely no sound reasoning in this, especially at the front end of a contract. If you are in business, you should expect to work everyday, just because a project is going to fill more days does not mean your overhead and operating expenses suddenly diminish. Try to remember they are lucky to control that much of your time. You could be making your good services available to more people if you were not so dedicated to them. If you have specific questions about how to price certain parts of the bid, feel free to post specific questions. I will assume for now that you know how to bid everything. Once you've completed the bid for each property at your normal full scale rate print it out. Now you can take each separate bid and determine what percentage of your time it will occupy. From there you can consider a discount that would not exceed the amount of marketing and sales it would take to fill that same time slot. Print your discount on a separate form then you can let the management company know that for each additional bid they accept you can apply the previous discount. For instance if they accept your bid for three properties, the discount would apply to the first two. In this way you are not risking your profit if they do not follow through with additional work. As needed you may want to contact your professional accountant for advise on how to strategically plan new equipment purchases, leases and etc. The idea is if you are entering into a known growth cycle you can makes decisions that will allow you to maximize you purchasing power and take advantage of tax incentives. Other than that Have Fun! If you are not having fun it is a clear sign you are doing something wrong. Make adjustments as needed. You've got this! Best of Luck Russell

Jon Before becoming involved with ESI in 1998, I was an avid user of one of the products you mention. Overall it was great product I was very satisfied with it's performance. I scheduled my customers on a one to two year cycle for maintenance. I am quite familiar with the issues you raise. As the creative director on the Wood-Tux project I made sure they were addressed. We delayed the dry time and extended the overall curing process. This also helped to eliminate some of the flashing issues you can encounter when applying product to hot wood. I'm not saying that we were able to eliminated the risk associated with "high spots" but you will find Wood-Tux WET to be very forgiving. In the same respect drip marks are much less of a problem because the product will stay open and allow for self leveling. Because Wood-Tux WET doesn't have the tendency to flash, you can correct any trouble areas (within 24 - 48 hours) with a rag and mineral spirits. If you don't mind wearing those awesome white boot covers you can walk on a freshly stained floor with no detrimental effect on the cured finish. The idea behind the "booties" is you don't want to track dirt onto the deck before it's cured. On the same note, remove your booties as you come off the deck so that you don't track stain onto concrete or anything near the deck. When I discuss maintenance cycle with contractors, I tell them to "be safe and tell customers you will check on them in two years" There will be times when the service life is much longer. This is especially true on cedar homes and log cabins. There will also be a small percentage of jobs where the product does not perform for two years. There are conditions that will cause the service life to be less than two years on deck surfaces. Heavy commercial traffic combined with extreme heat and frequent power washings have proven challenging. One such extreme environment that comes to mind is an outside deck with a bar. The area right in front of the service area of the bar requires touching up about every 6 months. Russell

The temperature of the wood should be 40 degrees or above. Keep in mind, the cooler the air temperature, the slower the product will cure. The product cannot cure if the air temperature is below 35 degrees. The warmer the wood is, the easier it is for a product to penetrate so allow for additional dwell time prior to backbrushing in very cool conditions.

I've been in the wood restoration business for a while now. There are more and more professionals entering the industry each year. Each year the industry improves and the contractors become more efficient. All the while the building industry grows exponentially faster. Nearly every new home built has a deck and there is no shortage of new natural wood sided homes and log cabins. There are several different business models available to those contractors who choose to enter the wood restoration industry. One thing that we can be certain of, our products will not be a suitable match for every model. I didn't ask what the moisture was on that deck, but we've stained plenty that would bury the meter. Obviously the only way to justify the price of a product is with value. So the question becomes what is the value of Wood-Tux WET. First I would say that it was designed specifically for professionals working in the wood restoration industry. With this product in your tool kit you can work more days out of each restoration season. You no longer have to reschedule as many jobs due to rain. The second value is you have less stress created from rescheduling jobs. No one likes to call customers and tell them they will have to be rescheduled due to "inclement weather." This is an inconvenience to the customer and can lead to lost jobs. Third and also related, no one likes the financial "blackouts" created when all you can do is clean and strip and the weather won't let you seal. Year after year I hear contractors struggle to get through the spring rains. It is always the same story, 15, 18, 25 decks ready to finish but it rains every morning or every afternoon. With Wood-Tux WET you get the job done and the money is in the bank instead of on paper. These delays can also lead to additional work. The longer a deck goes without being finished the greater the chances it will have to be rewashed prior to completing the job. I'm sure anyone who's worked in wood restoration has returned to find a deck covered with muddy dog prints. It can be difficult to explain to the customer that you will have to charge them more because you have to wash their deck again. Next I would point to the very high quality formulation. Simply put you will get more coverage from this product and it will work for you under a wider range of conditions. The look. . . it goes without saying this product draws in the referral work. Flexibility is another value. Think of the money you save not having to return to a small deck if you can wash it and turn around and seal it. This was not the intended use of the product, but there are contractors that think it's awfully handy. When it comes time for maintenance, the value compounds. After the quick wash, as needed, you freshen up with a light coat of stain and you are on your way, again no return trip. Finally I would ask you to examine carefully price vs. cost. There is no doubt that you can find products with a lower price on the pail but you have to be careful to watch what the product costs to complete the job. If you use twice as much or more, was it really half the price? I would argue, give Wood-Tux WET one season and tell me how you could justify not having it in your arsenal. Hope that's the answer you were looking for.

It would be both difficult and voluminous if I would attempt to explain exactly why Wood-Tux WET works in this format. We would have to get into all sorts of yawney topics like specific gravity, displacement and cohesion. Explaining how it works is really quite simple. We've found a way to convince oil that it is not always in it's best interest to float on water. If you get the product excited about doing it's job, it's very desire to bond with the wood will make it heavier than water. For this reason it doesn't matter how wet the wood is. This product wants to work. What you have to keep in mind is, the water has to come out of the wood for the stain to get in. No two objects can occupy the same point in space. If we ever figure a way around that problem, we will have you staining decks from your couch! If the wood is very wet to start with, like if you just washed it, you will want to keep an eye on it, as the stain goes into the wood water can begin to puddle on the surface. If it puddles bad, this can really slow down the curing process and increase the chances of an unsatisfactory condition. You want to brush out or disburse any water puddles that do form. In addition, the more water there is in the wood, the longer it is going to take for the stain to work into the wood. For example if you just spray a thin coat on the wood, it may look very nice when it dries, however may not last as long. If you spray on a thick application and allow it to dwell on the surface for some time and then remove the excess you will have a much longer lasting finish. You should try to let the wood take as much product as possible to achieve the maximum service life. We recommend that contractors who are applying Wood-Tux WET to a very wet deck for the first time stay for a minimum of 30 min after applying the stain. Once you are sure there is going to be no puddling it is safe to leave. As you become more familiar with using Wood-Tux WET on very wet wood you may wish to reduce your wait time. It also helps to develop an eye for which way the boards are crowned. This will help you predetermine if the conditions are conducive to puddling. If you have questions about crowning, shoot me an e-mail with "crown" in the subject line and I will fire you back a description. I hope this helps! Russell

A contractor/customer sent this picture to me this week. It is a Cambara deck that he stained last fall. He was going back to look at a few drip marks that were left on a stone paver. Nothing like going out of your way to satisfy your customers! I asked him to take a couple pictures for me while he was there. If you were surfing TGS last year you may remember this deck, I think I posted it under the title Wood-Tux on Cambara. I know it had Cambara in the title. Cambara, like Ipe is a dense wood and it can prove challenging for any finish. This is primarily because it can be difficult for the product to achieve good substrate penetration. Anyone who has worked Cambara can tell you how quickly most finishes will fail on this very hard wood. On this job Wood-Tux was applied 3:2 The following comment was included with the picture. I am not trying to make a suggestion as to how you use the product. It is intended to be used per the directions on the pail. Some contractors just prefer to alter the product for some jobs.

Jarrod- It works very much the same as applying it to a dry deck. It will cause the finish to turn a funky yellow color when it is first applied. This is caused by the way the light refracts off the water in the wood. As the moisture is purged the finish will take on a nice even appearance. You can see this if you look back through all the photos that Beth posted. Feel free to give me a call if you would like a more detailed description. I've also got another photo series available if you like. Just send me an e-mail with WET in the subject line.

James I can appreciate your point. It's easy to blur the line between what is customer support and what is marketing. There are a number of reasons you might want to add water to the product prior to application. Saving money was just the first that came to mind. You may want to add water to increase coverage. You may want to add water to thicken the product. You may want to add water to thin the product. You may want to add water to slow the dry time. You may want to add water to alter the rate of penetration. This is a relatively versatile product. On the other hand, you may use the product for years and never have the need/desire to alter it at all. The point is, if you are going to alter a Wood-Tux WET, you should know why you are doing it and what to expect. More importantly, your customer (property owner) should know what to expect before you apply it to their wood. If you have any questions you should call the Contractor Hotline prior to alteration. Always consult you local VOC regulations prior to thinning Wood-Tux WET with mineral spirits. Wood-Tux WET is VOC compliant in all 50 states. If you alter the product with mineral spirits you may no longer be compliant in your area. If you have any questions about VOC regulations call the Contractor Hotline. For anyone who is new to using Wood-Tux WET, I would say follow the directions on the label. If you have any questions, call the Contractor Hotline. Always do a test patch to determine the products suitability for the project at hand. To anyone who is a slam banging in-and-outer I would not recommend using our products. Our products will most likely not be compatible with your restoration practices. To everyone else. . . Best of Luck

Wood-Tux WET is an oil based product.

Jim Wood-Tux WET is in our professional series. That means that it will be treated just as the rest of our professional products are. We don't mass market our professional series. It's sold exclusively to contractors. Professional wood restoration contractors understand they are not going to profit by applying a product in a situation where it will not meet their customers expectations. Logic dictates that if you thin the product to the point of failure, your customer is not going to be happy. Most product guarantees, if you read the fine print, guarantee the product is free of defect. In the case that you do find a performance guarantee you can almost bet it will cost you more in time and handling charges then you will recover on the claim. We offer our contractor customers a satisfaction guarantee. That means we do our best to educate contractors about our products. We do the best we can to explain how to use them and what to expect in their particular climate. We offer a toll free hotline that is printed on every pail. We select distributors who understand the wood restoration process and when and where our products fit in. We trust our customers to follow the principals and practices of proper wood restoration. From there it goes on a case by case basis. That would work something like this. A contractor calls dissatisfied. We would help to better educate them so they better understand how to use the product and what to expect. We would replace the product. If the same customer has the same issue with the same product repeatedly, we would likely suggest that our product is not a good match for their methods and refund their money. This has never happened, so again, I would have to say it would be treated on a case by case basis. There will probably never be a sheet that goes out with the Wood-Tux WET. As a rule of thumb if I would expect the product to last four (4) years on a particular job and if I cut it 1:1, then I would schedule the maintenance visit for two (2) years. As you know it will really depend on the type of wood, how it was applied, the climate, the conditions of full sun or constant shade and any other number of infinite variables. If you have a question about a particular project it would be best to call prior to bidding it. Best of Luck! Russell

jnoden I am jumping in for Beth here. I just got off the phone with her and she is pretty busy this morning. I beleive that on that job they applied the Wood-Tux WET right out of the pail. Regarding your question about the performance of Water vs. Spirits as a thinner. . . If your only goal is to actually reduce the viscosity of the product, for instance if you've got a low flow tip on your sprayer, your best choice is spirits. It takes far less mineral spirits to reduce the viscosity of the product. If your goal is to extend the product, for instance you want to double the amount of product you have to save money, your best choice is to extend it with water. Another reason you may want to extend with water is for very hard wood application such as Ipe. Thinning with mineral spirits would help the product penetrate into the dense substrate, however the higher the spirit content the more likely you are to have flashing issues. Reducing with water allows you to apply a thinner product that will penetrate better and at the same time, slows down the curing process thereby reducing the risk of flashing. Regarding your question about the tinting kit. . . The stock Warm Honey gold color is by far the most popular color. I don't believe that Beth&Rod have ever had to use a tint kit. I know they've got a job coming up next month where they will likely be tinting some of the Wood-Tux. The tint kit is simply pure pigment that is added by way of droppers that ESI provides with the tint kit. The droppers measure out 3 ml and it is typically just a squirt or two per gallon. For instance to go from warm honey gold to a brown sugar color you would add a squirt of black. If you would like a list of contractors who are familiar with using the tint system, shoot me an e-mail with TINT in the subject line. If you prefer, feel free to give me a call with any questions you have. I am happy to help. Best of Luck Russell imrcc1@aol.com 636-288-8512

Jon I just asked Beth if she had an after picture. That is not what it would look like dry. As you apply Wood Tux to a wet deck it will turn yellow. As the stain forces the water out of the wood it turns to a natural honey gold color. What you see in that picture is somewhere in between. I would guess that was taken right after staining. Send me an e-mail and I will send you a photo series that illustrates the process. Just put Wood Tux in the subject line. Thanks Russell

James When we originally released the Wood-Tux stain it did not include the WET technology. It could not be applied to wet wood and also could not be cut with water. So in that regard it is different. For this application (dense hard wood) reducing with water is better than thinning with mineral spirits. You are trying to increase the workability of the product without decreasing the dry time. When you thin a stain with spirits it can lead to flashing and other issues with drying. You can expect Wood Tux WET to reduce easily with water, penetrate well and last well over 6 months on hardwoods like Ipe and Cambara. Best of Luck! Russell

James- I am sorry to hear that you had such a hard time. We have been getting excellent results with Wood-Tux on both Ipe and Cambara. I've also recently spoken to a contractor who does a lot of high end work in the South and he is reporting the same thing that we find here in the Mid-West. The best application method also happens to be the most economical. I would recommend that you try cutting the product up to 1:1 with water. The application is similar to other hardwoods. . .Spray or brush on and allow to dwell, then rag off the excess. Decks that were finished at 2 parts WT to 1 part water are slightly darker than those finished at 1:1 In either case, applications that are at the 6 to 8 month mark show little to no signs of failure. By comparison most other products need to be reapplied or refinished at the 6 month mark on hard woods like Ipe or Cambera. Some even before. I fully expect most Wood-Tux Decks that I've seen to go a full year without reapplication on these hardwoods. When you cut the Wood-Tux 1:1 with water it brings the cost per gallon down to $13.90 which makes it an economical choice as well. I would be happy to send you (or anyone) some pictures and details of Wood-Tux being applied to exotic hardwoods. If you would like, send me an e-mail with (hardwoods) in the subject line or give me a call and I will shot an e-mail right over to you. Best of Luck Russell Cissell imrcc1@aol.com 636-288-8512