FEATURES OF PAINTS AND STAINS
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 living room wall. The full total thickness of the paint that eventually ends up outside of your residence is usually about one tenth the thickness of your skin, and interior paint is even thinner. We ask a lot of that covering of skin. What it can do depends on a number of factors, like the quality and kind of paint or stain, and exactly how well the areas are prepared and painted.
Paint and stain should be durable, resisting fading and abrasion and allowing repeated washings. Interior paint should go on with reduced spattering. An excellent interior stain or clear coating should resist fading, peeling, or yellowing, and also be easy to maintain, free from impurities or waxes that could collect dirty residue and make cleaning or recoating difficult. Exterior paints should dry with a toughness that resists deterioration from all types of exposure, and an elasticity which allows for constantly expanding and contracting walls. With their thorough penetration and resistance to ultraviolet (UV) light, the stains and finishes on your home's outside surfaces should give a similar high performance.
The History of Stain and Paint
The oldest known paint was utilized 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 home is peeling after only three winters. Here's why: The regular mild temperature, humidity, and dark interiors of caves are ideal preservatives. Your house, on the other hand, is subjected to all sorts 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 seed 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, creating a formula that would exist almost unchanged until 1950.
The Chinese used oil from the Tung tree to cement the Great Wall, and 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 transformed little in the following centuries.
Milk paint dates back to Egyptian times, was widely used up until the late 1800’s when oil-based paints were introduced. Odorless and non-toxic, milk paint today is being revived as an excellent interior paint. Cassein, the protein in milk, dries very flat and hard, and can be tinted with other pigments. Like stains, milk paint must be coated with a wax or varnish, and is also very durable.
Created from hogs' bristles, badger and goat hair, brushes also changed little for several centuries. Bristles were hand bound, rosined, and greased, then hand laced into the stock of the brush. Hog's hair brushes, called China bristle brushes, remain a preferred brush for oil-based paints.
Pigments originally originated from anything that bore a color, from ground up Egyptian mummies to road mud. Most mineral or inorganic pigments came from rust, potassium, sea salt, sulphur, alum (aluminum), and gypsum, among others. Some extravagant works incorporated precious stones such as lapis lazuli. Hundreds of organic pigments from plants, insects, and animals composed all of those other painter's palette.
Paints and stains changed little from the time of the Pharaohs to the Industrial Revolution. A book on varnishes published in 1773 was reprinted 14 times until 1900, with only modest revisions. However, the colder climates of northern Europe did bring about the need for more lasting paint, and in the 1500s the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck developed oil-based paint.
Starting around the Middle Ages lead, arsenic, mercury, and various acids were used as binders and color enhancers. These and other metals made the mixing and painting process harmful. Paints and varnishes were usually combined on site, where a ground pigment was blended with lead, oil, and solvents over sustained high temperature. The maladies that arose from poisonous exposure were common amongst painters at least before late 1800s, when paint companies began to batch ready mix coatings. While contact with toxins given off through the mixing process subsided, exposure to the harmful materials inherent in paints and stains didn't change much until the 1960s, when companies ceased making lead based paints.
World War I forced the U.S. painting industry to modernize. Manufacturers had to discover a alternative to the natural pigments and dyes that came from Germany. They commenced to synthesize dyes. Today many pigments and dyes are chemically synthesized.
Inventions in the painting industry have extended well beyond pigments. Water-based latexes have gained in level of popularity as a safe, quality option to oil-based paints. Latexes have changed from simple "whitewashes" to highly advanced coatings that can outlast oil-based products. Both oil-based and latex coatings are emerging every year with distinctive improvements, like the ground metal or glass that's now added to reflect harming UV light.
A milestone in the evolution of coatings occurred in the very early 1990s with the introduction of a new class of paints and stains known as "water borne." Created by the need to adhere to stricter regulations, water borne coatings decrease the volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, within standard paint and stains. Toxic and flammable, VOCs evaporate as a coating's solvent dries. They could be inhaled or assimilated 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 ingredients: solvents, binders, pigments, and additives.
Binders and Solvents
Solvents are the vehicle or medium, for the materials in a paint or stain. They determine how fast a finish dries and exactly how it hardens. Water and alcohol are the key 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 durability. The expense of paint will depend on 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 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 contain a better amount of acrylic resins for better hardness and durability.
Alkyds and oil-based paints are simply the same thing. The word alkyd is derived from "alcid," a combo of alcohol and acid that acts as the drying agent. Both have the same binders, which might 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 professional use and a urethane modified alkyd for home use. Urethane boosts toughness.
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 stronger, require only water clean-up, have little odor, and are non-flammable. One disadvantage: They raise lumber grain and require sanding between coats.
Pigments; Paint and Stain
Pigments will be the costliest component in paint. In addition to providing color, pigments also impact paint's hiding power - its ability to cover an identical color with as few coats as possible. Titanium dioxide is the principal and 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
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 capacity to flow and level; they go on smoother than latex and dry more slowly, so brush streaks have more time to level out. That is why oil-based paints have a tendency to run on vertical areas more than latexes do.
Latex paint has been trying to catch up with oil-based paint over the years. 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 surface 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 had to let it to settle for a couple of hours. That is definitely no longer the case with better paints, that can be opened and used right out of the shaker with no danger 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 ranges from 50°F to 120°F. With added coalescents and, contrary to popular belief, antifreeze, some latexes can be applied in the same temperatures range, and even lower. Some outdoor latexes can be safely applied at temps as low as 35°F. Companies including Pratt & Lambert, Pittsburgh Paint, and Sherwin Williams have removed the surfactants to help their latex paints be applied in lower temperature ranges. As 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 responsible for much of the breakdown of any covering. It fades colors, dries paint, and increases the expansion and contraction process that makes paint crack and peel. UV blockers in paint may consist of finely ground metals and ground glass which is now being added for increased reflection of the sun's rays.
If you reside in a region with tons of humidity, rain, and insects, you may need 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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