Everett Abrams

The Joint Coatings Committee is basically an informal type committee right now that works strictly on a volunteer and only when needed basis with the Forest Products Laboratory. Many of the standards that were put in place were done when Sam Williams was in charge and has since retired. He is an amazing man who knows more about wood and coatings than anyone I have ever met. As Beth alluded to there have been a lot of changes over the years and some of these need updating as well as some new ones created. The reason the committee was disbanded was due to cutbacks in the government, The Forest Products Laboratory is part of the Department of Agriculture and their budgets were cut like everyone else's during the recession. There are some projects being worked on but they are slow in coming. Many of the large manufacturers have replicated test farms at their facilities and continue to perform R & D on products but that is truly where a lot of todays research is coming from, individual manufacturer's. If you have specific question please feel free to PM me as well.

Ryan,
A year of weathering on PTP should be plenty of time. Unless the wood was full out shaded from the sun and/or protected from moisture.
I'm not familiar with Sikkens but if it is mostly oil based, you may want to try acetone. Take a rag, douse it with some acetone, and quickly try rubbing out a small "shiner". The stuff is extremely volatile and evaporates quickly.
A note of caution. Don't light a smoke when working with acetone.