advice on s-w aqua-kem finish?
when it comes to finishes i’ve always used plain old lacquer clear. honestly i’ve never had a problem,but… everybody says i need to come out of the stone ages and use newer technology. so one of my choices {because i happen to have the s-w dealer make me a deal on 5 gal aqua chem] is to try this water base lac. going to be appling on all the door trim, 6 panel oak doors and kit. cabinets all stained with oil based stain. i’m thinking of appling 2 coats of s-w plain ol lac. sanding sealer,sand with 400 then spray 3 coats of this aqua chem on. this ok or do you have some ideas on this product.is this product more durable than lac? any other suggestions on finishes? there is nothing i hate worse than trying a new product out on something i have as much time in as something like this, i screw the finish up and i might as well of hung finger jointed pine and slopped some paint on. thanks larry
Replies
Hey, I love Kem Aqua. I started using it over a year ago, and I don't want to go back to regular lacquer in remodels. But good question. It's a learning curve. So here's what I know.
Water based. Don't let it freeze, and man, stir it good. All the goodies settle out in a 5 gal pretty quick. Mixer on a drill works good. Strain it with a regular lacquer filter. If it picks up nothing, you stirred enough.
Things not to use - airless. What this product needs is a very fine spray pattern, and a FFT in a pump is like trying to water your flowers with a firehose. I use a Binks pressure pot with a 2001 gun, and that works infinitely better than the 2001 suction feed I have. Really lets you fine tune things. If you don't have one and can't beg, borrow, or steal, I don't know what to tell you, other than its the only thing I've used that I think delivers the goods like they're intended.
Sanding sealer is moot. Kem Aqua has it's own, it it works great. Use that. You want everything cleaned and vaccumed like normal, then shoot the trim. You don't really need a mask from the VOC standpoint, the MSDS on the stuff makes it healthwise look lame compared to latex paint. You probably do want it just from the particles in the air standpoint. There is a very low odor, almost a faint ammonia, but I mean faint. I spray a basement out and run a fan, crack a window, 20 minutes later you can't smell it anymore.
After you shoot the sanding sealer, let it dry. Even in so-so conditions, it's dry enough to sand in 30-40 minutes. It good conditions, more like 20. Which is fine, since it's going to take 20 to shoot a house out anyway. Then do all your nail hole filling (whiting is good here - you want it dry), and scuff the sealer. To the hand, it will feel like fine sandpaper, but rubbing it with a lacquer pad smoothes it out very quickly.
Rather than shoot over it, you need to blow it off now. Since it's waterborne, it doesn't melt into previous coats like nitro. So if you shoot over the white dust, it becomes pretty permanant. I hook a nozzle onto a big compressor (the one that drives the pot) and air it all off.
Shoot the top coat. Couple of things here. Since you haven't played with it, practice on something vertical. It does not act like traditional lacquer, and when you get your fan so that the product is not running down your doors in sheets, you will think initially that you aren't putting anything on. But you are. Very high solids content. It's just something to get a feel for. But if you do get a run, don't sweat it. Cotton rag and denatured alcohol. Wipe the run out, let it dry, sand anything that looks iffy, and shoot it again.
Your top coat will dry in about the same time as the sealer. At this point, its going to look like bad poly. Really shiny and plastic. Yuck. No worries. Go home. 24 hours later, it has sucked down tight on the trim, and it looks great. You can't hurt the stuff. I've taken car keys to test boards and it doesn't scratch it.
Other things worth knowing. It sticks to everything. When it's wet, that's not an issue, since cleanup is so simple. But I wear glasses. The first time I shot it, I let the haze dry. Done. I wore my spares for 3 weeks and gradually chipped away at the stuff at night. Will do the same on window glass. My watch face was covered too. That's the bad side. The good side is it doesn't care what you spray it over. I've run it over adjacent trim just to even out the sheen - stuff that was nitro the first time. No problem.
My pot settings are generally about 5psi on the fluid and 25-30 psi on the nozzle. I get the fan sized for what I'm shooting, narrower for trim than doors, and the pattern very fine. Low fluid, high on the air knob. Clean all the tools and the pot lines with alcohol. Don't leave it in the lines. (KA, not the alcohol)
Horizontal things like mantles you can go overboard on without a lot of risk - that kind of thing gets more wear, so why not more finish. But you're far better off to do two thin coats than to try to build it wet. If you have too much, you'll see lines in it, kind of milky colored like you'd expect from a waterborne. They will clear up as it dries, but you can still get ridges, and it will take a good deal longer to dry.
One sealer and one top coat is all you need. It really does cover well. If you want to do 2 top coats, knock yourself out, but three is way overkill.
Anything else? Holler. I'm telling you, if you take ten minutes to get over the learning curve, you'll love the stuff.
Edit - since typically you let the overspray onto the wall and paint over it, that still works, but you will want to make sure and scuff that down a little too. It really makes the fuzzies on the DW paper stand up and dry that way, and if you don't knock them down, you'll see the overspray through the paint. But it's a great primer on the wall.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain
Edited 11/11/2004 7:56 pm ET by RW
theres nothing like a guy thats had his hands on a product versus the "product info sheet" telling you whats going to happen in real life. a couple questions, does s-w have a specific kem aqua sanding sealer, or are you just putting a coat of the finish on and letting it dry and sanding it? i'll be spraying it with a binks suction feed gun,have a hvlp gun also might play with that. i'm pretty comfortable with a gun [ bodyman/painter for 35yrs] but if i can't get it to lay down i can get a pressure pot. do you put this on pretty wet , or a little dry and let it flow out.[that comment about running it down the doors got my attention] you know i have to laugh about 4 yrs ago my bil gave me 3-5gal buckets of this stuff. it said "water based lacquer",being as i have worked with lacquer since the 70's i said " aw bs if it aint solvent based it ain't lacquer!" i took it to the waste disposal site here and got rid of it,what was that about 300.00 worth. leave it to me to throw something good and keep some pc of junk for 20 yrs that ain't worth 5.00. anyway thanks for the info and if i could go out in the front yard and throw a beer to neb [i'm in ks], i would -i owe ya one .larry
Yeah, I'm thinking here. Two fives runs just under three bills. You tossed some expensive stuff. KA has its own sanding sealer. You buy that too. Between the two fives, you will get a LOT of mileage out of the stuff compared to what you're used to with solvent based lacquers.
The HVLP isn't something I've put KA through. That might have some potential. But I've already tried the suction feed gun. Maybe you have better luck than I did, but I think the pot is infinitely better.
As to wet/dry, it goes on evenly wet, but I'm struggling for how to explain it adequately. I'll try it thus: If you set the gun for solvent lacquer and shot KA through it without changing, you would end up with entirely too much stuff. Sheets of finish running down. It's far more viscous. Now set the gun for shooting water. You're just trying to put an even sheet of water on a wall - just enough to get everything covered and wet, but without runs. That's the trick. Now shoot the KA. It's just heavy water (no, not literally - ha). But I use the same air cap and needle I do for solvent lacquer, just tune it down a lot. The air/fluid mix is far more heavy on the air side for the KA. But it balances out with the solids content being higher too. Maybe it's good that you've got a past as a body guy. You might translate this a little better. Just try it out. Best I can tell you.
Think of it this way. You shot auto bodies. You've probably tried furniture lacquer. Kind of the same, but not really. Different setting, different technique. But knowing one gets you pretty close to knowing #2, and the learning curve isn't too bad from there. So, same thinking. You've got those down, just do what you know and adjust as necessary. I'm trying to tell you what I know without scaring you away, because it's not that hard, it's just something (like everything else in the world) where the little details are important, but once you get them, bam, you're good.
Beer. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. How bout a Pepsi in a potato launcher. Not like there's any obstructions between there and here. I'll be outside waiting for it. (Flatlander joke)
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain
Looks like you've covered just about everything. The only thing I would disagree with is the use of an airless, depending on what type of project I'm doing, I will use the airless with one of the old double tips.
What I would add to RW's post is that if you are trying to match existing finishes that have nitro, the water base doesn't amber the same, so you might have to use toners or adjust the stain.
And has thin as it seems it can be tricky to atomize at first, like most any other latex product. I have heard some guys going to the #4 set for the HLVP, although I haven't tried it yet. With my 2 gal pot or my 2 qt pot usually I find that I have to crank the air pressure up a little.
I also tend to think that it is much more sensitive to weather than nitros. I also think that it is more work than using nitro, it's just a matter of becoming used to it
Barry E-Remodeler