WTW tips

[bigchaz 157]

700 sq foot all horizontal job I just sold with wood tux wet. Stripped the previous finish and brightened

Any tips for the WTW? I learned on my sample tests that it should be really thin. The wood is pine. Planning on using the 18 inch pad for it

Anything I should know or y'all recommend before putting it on?

[PressurePros 248]

Scott,

I didn't use the formula for brown sugare all that often. Here are a couple of pics of what you could expect it to look like (using last year's version of Wood Tux) The product is different this year with markedly different toning, diving and curing. It may look different this year. I know the warm honey gold looks much better (no more orange or yellow)

[PressurePros 248]

PS: Like Jarrod mentioned, what you have labeled Brown Sugar is not the right stuff.

[MMI Enterprises 289]

Have eaten alot of brown sugar and so yes it don't look like brown sugar. But surely it must be Brown Sugar as the manu sees or wants Brown Sugar to be.... Take 3 types of wood and prepare them a few different ways in sanding or treating them chemically and you'll have numerous dfferent looks or shades with any stain so.....

Most brown sugar like colors from manufactures are just called something else wouldn't ya say?

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

Try cutting that with Warm Honey Gold at 50%. (test in a small amount before you mix the whole enchilada)

Beth

[RPetry 564]

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.

[seymore 90]

I received my brown sugar yesterday. I seems a little darker than I expected, but it is likely my expectations are off. I tested a couple of spots on an old piece of pt and on a new piece of pt. It was dry in like 15 minutes. Not tacky this morning at all. I may have tested too thin though. This is my first time with WTW.

What color is that Burnt ASHY Grey? :lglolly:

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

Some of the recent posts - franchise talk, tweaking is for hobbyists - is all well and good for some business models, if that is your goal. Yes, Shane has consistency with his product with beautiful results. Diamond Jim has outstanding results with his Ready Seal. There are Wolman guys with killer pics, same with Mesmers, Penofin.

The bottom line is.......tweaking is not for hobbyists, it is what a professional does to make a product do what the professional says. There are multiple companies on this forum who have been "tweaking" WT for 2-3 years - what that indicates to me is that we have a manufacturer that is LISTENING to the contractors and TRYING to make people happy. Any other manufacturers doing that??? It shows that the product in and of itself has great merit and HELLO, we're all a part of making it the best it can be. This will sound quite disrespectful but it's their own claim - if you want a goof-proof stain, use Ready Seal.

Off my soapbox.

We have also had consistent results with WT. (this batch not withstanding)

Now I know unloaders wear out (they are mechanical) and hoses bust (have a life too) but that's like apples and oranges. As for acting like third graders, I don't know, we are all trying to deal with what has happened and get through it. (mechanical and three year old references from similar thread on PT State)

No one wants to lose a hard earned customer.

Beth

[RPetry 564]

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:

I guarantee other people are having other problems with other things but no one says their name.

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.

[Proclean 14]

Wow, what a thread. Just got back after a couple of days off. Guys still working though. Look at the thread from last week called garapa. That is Brown Sugar on cedar, PTP and garapa.

[MMI Enterprises 289]

"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."

In other words using worn out/loaded sand disks can result in heat burnishing the old sealers into the wood poors that much deeper resulting in less stain absorbsion..... burnishing is my gig on hard flooring.. :)

[RPetry 564]

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.

[Beth n Rod 1,279]

You can get them at ACR PRODUCTS

Beth

[bigchaz 157]

You can get them at ACR PRODUCTS

Beth

Ill be honest, it seems like ACR has just about everything you could ever want, and people have talked about them for almost every product. But for the life of me I cant figure that website out to save my life. It looks like its different again now, (I found a few items), but I feel like Ive never found very many things actually listed on there.

Is there a secret to seeing what exactly they sell?

[MMI Enterprises 289]

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.

Oh sorry Rick. I misread that ya had used pads.....You have the right word though in 'burnishing' if you were spinning fast enough to create heat. (maybe 1k rpm on up). Polishing is via abrasive or grit and burnish is via heat producing friction. In floor care I run the spectrum in using both abrasion and friction to create gloss..have used literally hundreds of models of pads by various manufacture.. is a fine art....basically for defelting it should be best to stay away from anything that can load up..open weave good, thermal pad bad...

I want to get this straight with you though...You saying when you did what you did you got just as much stain into the wood in the effected areas and it was the wood being too smooth or slick that caused failure?... You like somewhere around 100 grit smoothness I take it?

I can't really picture too smooth wood causes failure less it be a film forming sealer but can picture case where burnishing sealer or natural wood resins could cause less penetration of RS type products.

[RPetry 564]

Kevin,

The pads are very open weave. On this unusual job, sandpaper clogged in no time due to the old globs of remaining stain. The 3M pads with the Makita was my only available alternative. No matter what species, if it is exterior wood we never use any grit higher than 60 if a stain is to be applied.

As far as amount of oil into the wood, really cannot say. This is cedar, and seems that every cedar deck has its own "personality". What I am saying is that the paraffinic oil in the RS penetrated fine.

Speculation on my part but what may have happened is 1) heat generated by the Makitia/pads combined with natural resins in cedar formed some type of barrier on the cedar, and/or 2) the Makita effect was like a 200 grit sanding, likely "crushing" the top cellular structure of the cedar, forming another type of barrier.

Net effect was that possibly much of the RS pigments and possibly superflouous RS resins did not penetrate fully and as much as normal, possibly causing a RS "film" on the surface of the cedar. Surface film and RS are not in the same universe. The stain could not perform as designed.

[MMI Enterprises 289]

Yup..that what I said just in different words :)

I'm glad you understand it....,haha...

The 1) reason is right on..I doubt the theory of 2) though.

With that under our belt I double dare ya to sand a deck to about 400 and then stain. There won't be issue I suspect. All the times I've done interior wood pieces as such I never noticed traffic related wear issues. I mean tables usually don't get much traffic but gun stocks do. ...

Hey in thinking about it ya think it possable them folks just washed that deck too much?

[Russell Cissell 65]

Sometimes better isn't always best. We take customer feedback very seriously at ESI. Because we are a small company that deals primarily with contractors we always try to listen and deliver products that match the desires of our customers. What our customers told us about our Wood-Tux Formula was that it was "too thick."

The product was considered slightly difficult to apply because it is more heavy bodied than most stains. Being a slightly higher viscosity some smaller pump sprayers have difficulty moving the material requiring a larger orifice tip or thinning of the material. Because Wood-Tux is so high in resin and pigment solids it also requires back brushing on dense wood that isn't as absorbent as cedar for instance. Contractors who ran multiple unsupervised crews reported difficulty in training their employees to apply the product correctly.

Wood-Tux is very low in VOC making it a product that can be used in all 50 states. Because so many of our customers are in California or the more VOC restrictive states of the Northeast Corridor, simply thinning the product with mineral spirits wasn't an option. This would have resulted in lower resin solids and higher volatile content.

While it is completely fine to thin the product with spirits in the field, so long as you maintain VOC levels below that of your local restrictions, we've got to have a formula that works for all of our customers. (If you have questions about your local VOC regulations, feel free to contact me and I will point you in the right direction.)

What seemed like a simple solution proved to be too great of a challenge. Lowering the viscosity created a different type of issue. The thinner version of the stain is entirely too temperature sensitive. It requires more heat or additional dryers to cure quickly. If the temperature is too high, the dryers could cause the product to cure too quickly leading to overlapping. If the temperature is too low it takes a very long time to cure. We were able to balance the dryers to obtain the exact same cure time as the original product but only between 65 and 80 degrees.

While it has been reported (nearly 100%) that the thinner version is easier to apply, it is actually more difficult to work with because of the temperature sensitivity. Maintaining the lower viscosity would almost require two versions of the formula; one for cold weather and one for hot weather. In addition, the slower cure time makes the product more vulnerable to spot showers that occur during or immediately after application.

In a survey of contractors who have used at least 100 gallons of each formula, the vast majority prefer the thicker version because of it's obvious advantages. While it is slightly more difficult to apply it can be used in the broadest array of conditions producing predictable results. For these reasons, we have decided to roll back to the original formula and resume our full production schedule immediately.

For those who prefer a thinner, easier to apply product, we recommend Woodrich Brand Stain & Seal. It has the same level of pigment as Wood-Tux however it is slightly lower in resin solids. Woodrich Brand Stain and Seal is a 60/40 blend of Wood-Tux WET and Woodrich Brand Timber Oil which is our paraffinic oil stain.

If you are in the camp that counts paraffinic oil as a "solid," Woodrich Brand Stain & Seal is higher in solids than Wood-Tux. If you only count the resin and pigment it is slightly lower. While Wood-Tux will provide excellent one coat coverage on nearly any kind of wood, Woodrich Brand Stain & Seal may require a second coat on very old, porous or "thirsty" wood.

I sincerely regret any difficulties our customers experienced during this transition. As always we stand behind our products and will gladly work with you in any way we can. I am more than willing to answer any questions or provide additional information as needed. My current schedule should afford me more time to visit the BBS. As always, the best method of contacting me is direct at 636-288-8512.

Everyone here at ESI truly appreciates your patience and understanding.

Thank you!

[jnoden 15]

Russ you have helped my business tremendously with both quality products, technical advice and correcting any concerns. I look forward to continue the use of wtw and other products.

One question I had though is Im not sure if the last shipment I got has the japan drier in it so I bought a bunch of that stuff and have been adding a can to each bucket and it seemed ok to me. Is there any concerns with adding too much Japan dryer?

[Russell Cissell 65]

Jim

If the concentration of drier becomes too high it can impede the cross linking that is necessary for a hard cure. As long as you add no more than 2 - 4 oz per gallon you will be ok in either case.

The higher the temperature (both air and wood) the more active the dryers become. You will notice the product you have curing faster the warmer it gets outside.

[RPetry 564]

Russell,

Just got back in to this email message. We held off using the long drying WTW on this customer's ipe' deck horizontals due to forecasted thunderstorms. Set aside tomorrow to finish this never ending job and now this...

Rick,

I checked the deck and front porch today. It is now almost 10 days since you first applied the Woodtux stain on the railing and many of the ballisters and posts are still tacky. It is almost a week since you applied the Woodtux to the front porch. After it rained on Sunday you could see an oily residue on some of the surface, and although the porch is now dry to the touch, it is still tacky in a number of places. Also, where ever the wood has been stained, it has become a dirt magnet. My main fear is that the stain will never dry out completely, and even if it does, the surface will not be very nice because of all the dirt, dust and and occasional footsteps it was subject to while it was drying. Before you go ahead and apply the remaining Woodtux you have, I'd like to explore my options. Please give me a call when you get a chance at xxx-xxx-xxxx so we can discuss. Thanks.

-Steve

It will be nearly two weeks since we started stripping this ipe' job. This guy's a stickler for sure, but so be it. For your information, 4 oz. of Japan Dryer / gal. of WTW was added for all stain on the project. I need the normal drying WTW in warm honey gold, and I need it quick. Kindly advise, cell is (609) 468-7965. We really need to get this job done.

Thanks.

[bigchaz 157]

I did a job today with a bucket of wood tux I had from about two weeks ago and the stain was drying immediately on the spindles. Looks great and dove into the wood with no tackiness

Curious how much different will the older formula (that you are rolling back to) be than the one Ive used on the last couple jobs? Color differances? And how much thicker are we talking here? Does the stain still have the same opacity (Same amount of wood grain showing through?)

[plainpainter 217]

Russell have you ever considered going from a 'boiled' linseed oil that uses dryers, to a fully polymerised 'bodied' linseed oil? If I understand this correctly the old oil based primers use to be a mixture of Raw linseed oil and bodied linseed oil - since there are no dryers present in the 'Bodied' linseed oil - the Raw linseed oil was free and unperturbed to dive deep into the wood without being corrupted by dryers present in the 'boiled' linseed oil. So once the spirits where evaporated - you already had a cross-linked surface layer.

[Russell Cissell 65]

Rick

Give me a call at 636-288-8512 and I will make sure you are taken care of.

Charlie

The batch that we had the most problems with was shipped out over a month ago. There is a good chance that you would never have a problem with the stain that you have.

The colors are the same, the only difference is the viscosity and cure time. It's not that much thicker, in fact there was no issue with most sprayers, only a select few of the smaller pump sprayers. It is about the same as the difference between water and antifreeze.

Daniel

I don't go real far into talking about our resin system online but I will say that we don't us a boiled linseed oil or a raw linseed oil. One of the long oil alkyds used in the formula is derivative of linseed oil, but that is as close as it gets. I suppose that you could call this a "bodied" linseed oil.

[James 624]

So Rssell Cssell should the people who own the Non drying WTWWET use it or be sent new stuff by you? I need to Know today because I have a huge jobboner! I need to know by tommorow !!Call My cell I start a 3500 ipe today>>>>>>>

[MMI Enterprises 289]

Russell have you ever considered going from a 'boiled' linseed oil that uses dryers, to a fully polymerised 'bodied' linseed oil? If I understand this correctly the old oil based primers use to be a mixture of Raw linseed oil and bodied linseed oil - since there are no dryers present in the 'Bodied' linseed oil - the Raw linseed oil was free and unperturbed to dive deep into the wood without being corrupted by dryers present in the 'boiled' linseed oil. So once the spirits where evaporated - you already had a cross-linked surface layer.

Daniel, There is some confusion..I'll try to help...

Boiled refers to mix of raw oil, solvents which can be of varying speed, and driers...drys faster..

Bodied refers to raw oil heated without oxygen present to thicken and polymerize hence the implied term that it has more body. It will not help another consistancy oil dive deeper. In case of bodied linseed oil... they dry slower then boiled and they are called 'stand oil'. It's use is to thicken oil mixes and give durability properties. This heating act/polymerization is known as crosslinking which makes a finish durable and solvent resistant and but far as I know doesn't make for neither a faster 'surface' cure or a faster 'through' cure. The term cure means and comes by way of evaporation of the solvent initially and then mainly oxygen uptake (oxydation) creating a reaction (causes heat btw)that turns the oil into a solid composed of a totally different chemical makeup. This fully completed process relates to the general or full curing time. The term 'stand' has two fold meaning in that such oil stands up (has body) or that such oil stands up (has durability). :) . In a sense perhaps you can now see that the resultant thicker/polymerized/crosslinked particles are suspended in a medium and are not really more so on their way to being cured persay... (such is also done in acrylic water based finish).

Another way to thicken an oil is to blow it which is act of passing warm to hot air through it....Forgive if this is not totally accurate as it is late and I am not a chemist.

You can gleam all this from readily available websites like wikipedia or sites dedicated to oil paintings if you really study hard. This one not bad: Tung & Linseed Oils

(note how tung will be faster if bodied in general)