I ocasionally have to repair glazed window putty in apartments where I do not have access for enought time to properly glaze and allow drying to paint.
I am therefore looking for a caulk which will either fill voids in the putty and can be immediately painted or which will replace missing linseed putty.
Replies
I don't know of anything on the market to do what you are looking for.
What I typically do, is remove the sash altogether and close opening temporarily. (with plywood usually) Take the sash to my shop and repair as necessary in the proper fashion, allowing glazing to set.
This way, I don't have to run back and forth to that particular project at an inconvenience. I'm able to bill such projects out at an hourly rate.
If you have a problem with certain Breaktime members, put them on ignore. Don't go whining to the moderators about it. Grow up already. Buncha Marys.
There is a latex glazing caulk. DAP makes one and it is commonly availalbe.
But my experience is that it does not work well when trying to use it to fill missing chunks of putty.
It is designed to do whole pains.
It has a special end to tool it as it is applied and it causes a real mess when trying to use over missing putty.
If you ever have to hack out a window that was glazed with Latex glazing you will love it as much as I do.
Do a good job instead. Clean out the old putty, prime the sash, reglaze with Dap, come back another time and paint.
Yea, I know: "Time is money", but half measures are for sh**.
Tom
Quality building is probably the best "green building".
Idaho Don
I know a guy who is a small window manufacturer. If memory serves me well, he uses Pecora AC-20. I don't think it's anything special, though. Just a high-grade water-solvent caulk. Within a day or two, it's dry enough to paint.
With that said, I don't particularly care for the approach. The caulk shrinks significantly, and as someone else has pointed out, reglazing a sash that has been set with caulk is nothing short of a nightmare.
One idea I can give you is to use glazing stops instead of glazing compound. All you need is a little piece of molding that fills what is left of the glazing rabbet after the glass is bedded. Assuming you're working on old single glaze window sash, you'd want a glazing stop that's about 3/16" x 3/8". Cut all your pieces to fit by mitering the corners, then set them in some caulk and shoot them in place with 18-ga brads. It takes a little longer with this approach, but you can paint almost immediately.
If you look at high-end work on "old houses" (i.e. pre 1930s), you'll sometimes see these stops used. You'll also see stops on commercial buildings from the same time period. Most of the time, these were 1-3/4" sash as opposed to 1-3/8", so the stops were a bit larger.
Sometimes a polyurethene caulking will work such as Tremco Dymonic (among others). Painting is going to be a problem with anything you use. The urethane caulking comes in several colors, and you might get lucky, and get a close match. Make sure you get all of the loose putty out and solvent wipe the area first. You may have to find a comercial dealer to get access to all of the colors though. Good luck!