MORE ABOUT STAINS AND PAINTS
Nearly every kind of surface, from drywall to concrete, needs protection from the elements. These harmful elements can range between raging blizzards to innocent looking sunlight on a dining room wall. The full total thickness of the paint that ends up on the exterior of your house is usually about one tenth the thickness of your own skin, and interior paint is even thinner. We ask a great deal of that coating of skin. What it can do depends on a number of factors, including the quality and kind of paint or stain, and how well the walls prepped and painted.
Paint and stain should be durable, resisting fading and abrasion and allowing repeated washings. Interior paint can go on with reduced spattering. An excellent interior stain or clear coat should resist fading, peeling, or yellowing, and also be easy to maintain, free from impurities or waxes that could collect dirt and grime and make cleaning or recoating difficult. External paints should dry with a toughness that resists deterioration from all types of exposure, and an elasticity which provides for constantly expanding and contracting surfaces. With their thorough penetration and amount of resistance to ultraviolet (UV) light, the stains and finishes on your home's outdoor surfaces should give a similar high performance.
Historical Development of Stain and Paint
The oldest known paint was used by the painters of Lascaux, who ground natural pigments with water and a binder that might have been honey, starch, or gum. You might be wondering why these cave paintings have lasted thousands of years as the paint on the south part of your house is peeling after only three winters. Here's why: The continuous mild temperature, humidity, and dark interiors of caves are ideal preservatives. Your house, on the other hand, is exposed to all types of weather and conditions.
The Egyptians knew as soon as 1000 B.C. that paint could protect as well as decorate. Beeswax, vegetable oils, and gum arabic were heated and blended with Earth and vegetable dyes to paint images which have lasted a large number of years. The Egyptians used asphalt and pitch to preserve their paintings. The Romans later used white lead pigment, making a formula that could exist almost unchanged until 1950.
The Chinese used oil from the Tung tree to cement the Great Wall, and also to preserve wood. The Chinese used gums and resins to make sophisticated varnishes such as, shellac, turpentine, copal, and mastic. The formulas and applications for those varnishes also evolved little during the centuries.
Milk paint dates back to Egyptian times, was widely used until the late 1800’s when oil-based paints were introduced. Odorless and non-toxic, milk paint today has been revived as an excellent interior paint. Cassein, the protein in milk, dries very level and hard, and can be tinted with other pigments. Like stains, milk paint has to be covered with a wax or varnish, and it is very durable.
Created from hogs' bristles, badger and goat hair, brushes also improved little for many centuries. Bristles were hand bound, rosined, and greased, then hand laced in to the stock of the brush. Hog's hair brushes, called China bristle brushes, are still a preferred brush for oil-based paints.
Pigments originally originated from whatever bore a color, from ground up Egyptian mummies to road dirt. Most mineral or inorganic pigments came from rust, potassium, sea salt, sulphur, alum (aluminum), and gypsum, among others. Some extravagant projects incorporated valuable stones such as lapis lazuli. Hundreds of organic pigments from plants, insects, and animals comprised the rest of the painter's palette.
Paints and stains changed little from the time of the Pharaohs to the Industrial Revolution. A book on varnishes publicized in 1773 was reprinted 14 times until 1900, with only small revisions. However, the colder climates of northern Europe have brought about the need for more durable paint, and in the 1500s the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck developed oil-based paint.
Starting during the Middle Ages lead, arsenic, mercury, and different acids were used as binders and color enhancers. These and other metals made the mixing and painting process hazardous. Paints and varnishes were usually mixed on site, where a ground pigment was blended with lead, oil, and solvents over sustained high heating. The maladies that arose from toxic exposure were common amongst painters at least before late 1800s, when paint companies commenced to batch ready mix coatings. While contact with contaminants given off during the mixing process subsided, exposure to the harmful elements inherent in paints and stains didn't change much before 1960s, when companies ceased making lead based paints.
World War I forced the U.S. painting industry to modernize. Manufacturers had to discover a replacement for the natural pigments and dyes that originated from Germany. They started out to synthesize dyes. Today many pigments and dyes are chemically synthesized.
Innovations in the painting industry have extended well beyond pigments. Water-based latexes have gained in popularity as a safe, quality alternative to oil-based paints. Latexes have altered from simple "whitewashes" to highly advanced coatings that can outlast oil-based products. Both oil-based and latex coatings are emerging every year with significant improvements, like the ground metal or glass that's now added to reflect damaging UV light.
A milestone in the evolution of coatings occurred in the very early 1990s with the introduction of a fresh category of paints and stains known as "water borne." Created by the need to adhere to stricter regulations, water borne coatings decrease the volatile organic ingredients, or VOCs, found in standard paint and stains. Dangerous and flammable, VOCs evaporate as a coating's solvent dries. They can be inhaled or consumed through the skin, and create ozone pollution when subjected to sunlight.
THE MAKE UP OF PAINT AND STAINS Paints and stains contain four basic types of materials: solvents, binders, pigments, and additives.
Binders and Solvents
Solvents will be the vehicle or medium, for the elements in a paint or stain. They determine how fast a coating dries and how it hardens. Water and alcohol are the primary solvents in latex. Oil-based solvents range between mineral spirits (thinner) to alcohols and xylene, to napthas. The solvent also contains binders, which form the "skin" when the paint dries. Binders give paint adhesion and toughness. The cost of paint is based in large part upon the quality of its binder.
Because water is the vehicle in latex paint, it dries quickly, allowing for recoating the same day. The odor that you notice when by using a latex paint or stain is the "flashing," or evaporation, of the binder and solvents. The binders in latex are minute, suspended beads of acrylic or vinyl acrylic that "weld" as the paint dries. Latex enamels include a higher amount of acrylic resins for greater hardness and durability.
Alkyds and oil-based paints are basically the same thing. The term alkyd comes from "alcid," a mixture of alcohol and acid that acts as the drying agent. Both have the same binders, which may include linseed, soy, or Tung oils. Oil based and alkyd enamels may contain polyurethanes and epoxies for extra hardness. Alkyd paints come in powerful combinations such as two part polyester-epoxy for industrial use and a urethane altered alkyd for home use. Urethane boosts sturdiness.
Water borne coatings use a two part drying system: water is the drying agent, and oils form a hard-drying resin. These new coatings match and sometimes out perform their oil-based cousins. They resist yellowing, are more durable, require only water clean-up, have little odor, and are non-flammable. One disadvantage: They swell real wood grain and require sanding between coats.
Pigments
Pigments are the costliest component in paint. Besides providing color, pigments also influence paint's hiding power - its capacity to hide an identical color with as few coats as you possibly can. Titanium dioxide is the principal the most expensive ingredient in pigment. Top quality paints not only have significantly more titanium dioxide, but also more finely ground pigment. Inexpensive paints use coarsely ground pigment, which doesn't bind well and washes off easier.
Additives; Paint and Stain
Additives regulate how well a paint contacts, or wets, the surface area. In addition they help paint flow, level, dry, and resist mildew. Oil is the surfactant, or wetting agent, in oil-based paint. These paints have a natural thickness and capability to flow and level; they go on smoother than latex and dry more slowly, so brush marks have a chance to level out. That's why oil-based paints have a tendency to run on vertical surfaces more than latexes do.
Latex paint has been trying to catch up with oil-based paint over time. Today many latexes outperform oil-based paints and primers, thanks to thickeners, wetting agents (soapy substances that are also known as surfactants), drying inhibitors, defoamers, fungicides, and coalescents. Defoamers keep latex paint from bubbling and leaving pinpricks (called "pin holing") in the paint as it dries. Bubbling is induced when the soap wetting agent rises to the top as it dries. The better the paint, the less pin holing you will have. It used to be that if latex paint was shaken at the paint store you would have to let it to settle for a few hours. That is definitely no longer the truth with better paints, which may be opened up and used right out of the shaker with no threat of pin holing.
Coalescents help latex resins bond, especially in colder weather. Oil-based paint, because it dries slowly and resists freezing, can adhere and dry in temperature from 50°F to 120°F. With added coalescents and, believe it or not, antifreeze, some latexes can be applied in the same temperature range, and even lower. Some exterior latexes can be securely applied at temperature ranges at only 35°F. Companies including Pratt & Lambert, Pittsburgh Paint, and Sherwin Williams have removed the surfactants to help their latex paints be applied in lower temperatures. Because the wetting agents have been removed, the latex dries faster.
UV blocking chemicals have been added to paints and stains to help slow the aging process. Sunlight is accountable for a lot of the break down of any covering. It fades colors, dries paint, and adds to the expansion and contraction process which makes paint crack and peel. UV blockers in paint may consist of finely ground metals and ground glass which is now being added for even greater reflection of the sun's rays.
If you live in an area with lots of humidity, rainfall, and insects, you may want to consider adding a biocide or fungicide to your paint. Biocide deters insects, and fungicide counters mildew. Many coatings already contain some fungicide, but only in small concentrations because of strict interstate regulations.
Sound Quality Painting
824 90th Dr SE suite B
Lake Stevens WA 98258
(425) 512-7400
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