plainpainter

I believe you are right - so far have tried TWP 500 and 200 series and like them the best of all the stains I have used on the 'front' end. We'll see if they hold out decently. If so - this is my 'goto' stain from now on. I don't think the 200 series is appropriate to use for 95% of residential clients on decks - so will have to try the 1500 series, which is the 500 series replacement. My original question about spirits screwing up a product had more to do if adding extra spirits could screw up the 'gradient' of how the different oils get sucked into the wood. Like A.C. the parafinnics separate and dive deep leaving the linseed to plug up the pores. Could adding spirits cause a reversion effect thus making the linseeds plug the pores before the parafinnics could have a chance to dive in? So far on my TWP200 deck, the thing I have already noticed about it unlike ESI timberoil and A.C. - is that you hardly see any oil 'weeping' or rainbows during a rainstorm, perhaps a heavier grade of crude is used for TWP parafinnics that is heavier than water?

Second to last deck I did, Charlie, lady came right behind my back to walk inside walking all over standing wet stripper - I get no breaks with many homeowners.

Rick, I haven't used Readyseal - I have used ESI's timberoil product which is similar as well as TWP200. Timberoil is not nearly as difficult as TWP200 is, but I still remember pools of Timberoil coming out in the hot sun days after application. Is Readyseal performance different from this? And if it isn't - do you have any sort of agreement with your customers not to walk on the deck for days written in your contracts? My experience is that customers want to walk on their decks the very next day - and I have had to appease that desire. It's the rare customer now that is willing to give up 48 hours from their lives to not use their deck.

Ok - Readyseal probably hasn't needed to reformulate. But you have to be one brave person to use that stuff. I am at the one week mark with TWP200 - and puddles of parafinnic oil formed in the hot sun today - and unlike readyseal, it has curing resins at the top to supposedly lock everything in! I love this stain, but I couldn't use it for customers unless they were going on vacation for 2+ weeks!

It helps resins and pigment penetrate into the wood before it sets up, otherwise everything just sits on the surface. Manufacturers used the stuff in spades, it's Uncle Sam that told them they had to cut back due to air quality standards. Stains haven't been the same since they made the changes.

There is no law, Rick, that says I can't spread my own turpentine/boiled linseed oil mix onto a deck. Now if I want to sell it on some retail shelf, then I have to comply to all those VOC laws.

illegal to manufacture, but perfectly legal to buy, and if I feel like it - I can swab on mineral spirits straight onto my deck.

Starting VOC is 100 for TWP 200, you can thin it 30% and still be legal.

If a manufacturer would reply, I would prefer it to be one not tied to this industy - someone from a Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, etc - someone with much experience formulating oil based products, yet has no motives to lie to us to protect their products from scrutiny. I can understand the proportion of pigment and mildewcides may have to change in order to maintain the same coverage density rates when applied - but other than that, does adding mineral spirits fundamentally screw up a low VOC product. Or if you just apply more wet-on-wet coats so that the original spread rates are maintained, has something changed? We use to all spread deck stains that averaged 30% solids before 2005, now we spread stains that average 60% solids. If we double the mildewcide and pigment along with doubling the spirits to make a 250 VOC stain into a 550 VOC stain - will it truly be Screwed up?

I was on my way to work, deskjob enjoying a 75k salary pre-republican bust economy, listening to Howard Stern on the radio talk about it.

First of all Charlie, that's a stupid assumption on your part. I didn't start changing the product until this spring as reactionary to the results I was getting, that deck I did 2 years ago was unadulterated. I used that product in it's original form. Secondly, I haven't seen an arguement that adding more thinner reduces the density - all it does it get better penetration and more product into the wood. Especially if you perform 2 wet/on/wet coats like I do. I flood the surface and wait about 45 minutes to let the first layer settle in the wood and set up and then drench it again. What made the products pre 2005 such high quality was the amount of spirits in them. All I did was make the stain 550 VOC much like TWP 100 - which is considered by many to be the 'tops' in stain. The arguement/selling point manufactueres have been making about 'high' solids stain translating into higher quality is something I have yet to see in the 'field' as producing spectacular results.

Well my $5 dollar investment in M-1 per gallon did little more than shovel $hit against the mildew tide. Extra Jap drier to cure the surface faster to lock everything in, and extra spirits to make sure everything dives in deeper faster before the extra Jap drier sets up everything. It's amazing to me that these ingredients that can only improve a product's performance is then intimated by another member as the cause of failure - by adulterating the base product. When it's the base product that was failing miserably to begin with. What many folks forget about the stain debacle several years ago about non-drying, and jap drier exasperating the situation - is that jap drier is mainly a 'surface' drier. And if the original product is not actually penetrating into the wood - then of course Jap drier will only make it worse. Had the contractors here had thinned the stain considerably so that it could have actually penetrated into the wood, the jap drier would have been successful. This is what is causing most of the failure out there - not enough penetration into the substrate, with a gooey layer of uncured 'vegetable' resins sitting on the surface. Extra thinner, extra jap drier, and extra mildewcide will all aid in diminishing this. If a product is still not performing - then there are more severe issues with it.

Just got a call today from an unhappy customer whose fir deck I restored 3 months ago and a few days - says the floor is all black with little color left - oh, joy. And I already was adding extra spirits, one bottle of M-1 mildewcide to each gallon after adding spirits, and extra jap drier to make sure the surface dried/cured faster. Will be trekking over to take pics as soon as the sun comes back out. This is like becoming a bad joke. What was the O/P again?

This is my own deck, it's been a great source of experimentation over the years. I tried ESI timberoil on it back in 2007 and recoated it in 2008, and just didn't like the product. I cleaned it last year with F-10, but never got around to staining it - I had bought a couple of pails of TWP 200 based upon what Scott Paul said about it on his own deck. Despite many warnings about it's curing properties - I decided I wanted still try it and use a parafinnic product. What I learned about the product, it's like pushing tinted transmission fluid - which I expected. But what I did discover is that it is a curing resin product with a positive dry over the parafinnics. In these photos the deck is prepared, and one coat on the horizontals.

Here are pics of a coat of stain on all the verticals and a 2nd coat on the horizontals - I waited 24 hours between coats on the horizontals

My house is all oil solid stain - I painted the whole house 5 years ago, and now I am just going over areas where the stain is flaking off, mostly due to all the tremendous amount of water constantly bouncing off the deck and onto the wall. Those areas I just scraped, sanded, percarb washed, acid balanced - and then I just soaked them with the TWP 200 while I was staining the deck - will paint them with the solid stain in a couple of weeks once the 200 has settled down.

Rick, I am not 'bashing' a product - just recounting my experience.

The main reason why I became very public about this, is that I am small company - and I trusted what other members said about this product and risked my business on it. Only because I just don't do enough work to have many experiments going on at the same time. I had to embrace this product 100% on the faith of what other members said. I initially saw very good results with the semisolid line on Mahogany - and my initial thoughts were this is just inline with the experience of others. But several months later when I had issues on my own little porch last year, and then with each additional data point of feedback, the picture just increasingly became sour. I am outright mad. So there were all these 'pumpers' for the product 2 and 3 years ago, how come that's ok to publicly say how great a product is? Yet when my results are 180 degrees opposite - I am suppose to shutup, and I am not being nice to the manufacturer? I have no interest in bashing a product for the sake of doing so, I don't have any ownership in any competing stain company. I just want a stain that is reasonably good quality that I can back by my two year warranty and grow my company with. So far nothing I have used works better than what I was buying for $18/gallon 7 years ago. Hopefully, TWP will give reasonable life and not grow a ton of mildew.

Do we have a section here that is out of public view? On painttalk - there is a section called the 'zone' where only members, advanced members can talk - that would be really cool if we had that here.

I certainly can understand how a formulated product can work great in one area of the country and not the next. I have talked to Jake, and he didn't seem open to 'teaking' his product. Perhaps he already has and I don't know it, that product won't show up until next year on my decks. I can only base what I see and what folks tell me, from what I laid down two seasons ago. I haven't sat on my laurels on this either - I have changed Jake's product, I add 3 ingredients to it now - we'll see how that works in the coming years. I just want a product that works and works well, that doesn't get a lot of mildew, and when it does is easily cleaned without being stripped.

Rick some corrections, the deck finish was 9 months old when the finish was wiped out and had gone through one winter. IT was a 50/50 mix of rustic brown and sierra redwood - I don't know what the pigments are - I assume they contain trans-oxide pigments as that is what is written on the side of the can.

Charlie, again I'd like to reiterate that I am not attacking the quality you provide your customers, your quality is very high. I just don't want to see you get to a point and say 'sheet, these guys were right' My results are consistently very very very bad - and I talk to a few guys outside these online forums with similar experience. I will say the decks look absolutely beautiful when they are laid down, my work included - it's just the back end of mildew growth and rapidly deteriorating finishes. I had an ipe/camuru deck where the finish was totally 100% gone in 7 months, and I had lambswooled the finish to make sure absolutely no buildup on top of the surface. We all know nothing lasts on those decks, but some of you use products that give 12+ months of service - I think performance on hardwoods is a good proxy for how a product will perform on a softer wood species. In my case 7 months and the finish was completely wiped out.

Charlie, just trying to help out. Remember, you were behind the 8 ball in realizing how bad woodtux was for mildew. You said it was great, while everyone had ditched the product for everything but hardwoods. Then you too got caught up and found out the product did indeed grow mildew. My prediction Charlie for 2012 is that you will find out what we've all found out. We all get lucky sometimes, that product doesn't match the quality as a company you put into your customers decks. At the very least put down some TWP and get that experiment going, just in case I am right. Nothing every wrong with hedging your bets.

It's your funeral, Charlie, I'll write you a nice eulogy though!

I wonder how many in this thread are still using A.C. as their 'goto' stain two years after this thread?