MORE ABOUT PAINTS AND STAINS
Almost every kind of surface, from drywall to concrete, needs protection from the elements. These hazardous elements can range between raging blizzards to innocent looking sunlight on a bed room wall. The total thickness of the paint that ends up on the exterior of your house is usually about one tenth the thickness of your skin, and interior paint is even thinner. We ask a great deal of that coating of skin. What it can do depends upon a variety of factors, like the quality and type of paint or stain, and exactly how well the surfaces are prepared and painted.
Paint and stain should be durable, resisting fading and abrasion and allowing repeated washings. Interior paint should go on with little spattering. An excellent interior stain or clear coating should resist fading, peeling, or yellowing, and also be easy to maintain, free of impurities or waxes which could collect dirt and make cleaning or recoating difficult. Outside 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 resistance to ultraviolet (UV) light, the stains and finishes on your home's outdoor surfaces should provide a similar high performance.
A Timeline 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 a large number of years while the paint on the south part of your property is peeling after only three winters. Here's why: The constant mild temperature, humidity, and dark interiors of caves are ideal preservatives. Your home, on the other hand, is subjected to a myriad of weather and conditions.
The Egyptians knew as early 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 may have lasted thousands of years. The Egyptians used asphalt and pitch to maintain 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 advanced varnishes such as, shellac, turpentine, copal, and mastic. The formulas and applications for those varnishes also transformed little in the following centuries.
Milk paint goes 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 alternative interior paint. Cassein, the protein in milk, dries very smooth and hard, and can be tinted with other pigments. Like stains, milk paint should be sealed 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 into 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 street dirt. Most mineral or inorganic pigments originated from rust, potassium, sea salt, sulphur, alum (aluminum), and gypsum, along with others. Some extravagant works incorporated precious stones such as lapis lazuli. A huge selection 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 publicized in 1773 was reprinted 14 times until 1900, with only minor revisions. However, the colder climates of northern Europe have brought about the need for more lasting paint, and in the 1500s the Dutch designer Jan van Eyck developed oil-based paint.
Starting around 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 dangerous. Paints and varnishes were usually mixed on site, in which a ground pigment was blended with lead, oil, and solvents over sustained high temperature. The maladies that arose from dangerous exposure were common among painters at least before late 1800s, when paint companies started to batch ready mixed coatings. While contact with toxins given off during the mixing process subsided, exposure to the harmful ingredients 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 find a replacement for the natural pigments and dyes that came from Germany. They commenced to synthesize dyes. Today many pigments and dyes are chemically synthesized.
Improvements 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 altered from simple "whitewashes" to highly advanced coatings that can outlast oil-based products. Both oil-based and latex coatings are emerging yearly with noteworthy improvements, including the ground metal or glass that's now added to reflect destroying UV light.
A milestone in the evolution of coatings occurred in the early 1990s with the introduction of a new class of paints and stains known as "water borne." Created by the necessity to comply with stricter regulations, water borne coatings reduce the volatile organic materials, or VOCs, within standard paint and stains. Harmful and flammable, VOCs evaporate as a coating's solvent dries. They could be inhaled or absorbed through the skin, and create ozone pollution when exposed to sunlight.
THE MAKE UP OF STAINS AND PAINTS Paints and stains contain four basic types of ingredients: solvents, binders, pigments, and additives.
Paint and Stain Solvents and Binders
Solvents will be the vehicle or medium, for the elements in a paint or stain. They regulate how fast a covering dries and exactly 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 includes binders, which form the "skin" when the paint dries. Binders give paint adhesion and resilience. The cost of paint is dependent 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 utilizing 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 higher amount of acrylic resins for increased hardness and durability.
Alkyds and oil-based paints are basically the same thing. The term alkyd is derived from "alcid," a combo 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 commercial use and a urethane altered 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 hardwood grain and require sanding between coats.
Pigments; Paint and Stain
Pigments are the costliest element in paint. In addition to providing color, pigments also have an effect on paint's hiding power - its capacity to protect 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 more titanium dioxide, but also more finely ground pigment. Inexpensive paints use coarsely ground pigment, which doesn't bind well and washes off more easily.
Stain and Paint Additives
Additives regulate how well a paint contacts, or wets, the surface. They also 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 potential to flow and level; they go on smoother than latex and dry more slowly, so brush stridations have a chance to level out. That's why oil-based paints tend to drip on vertical areas more than latexes do.
Latex paint has been playing catch up with oil-based paint over the years. Today many latexes outperform oil-based paints and primers, because of 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 brought on when the soap wetting agent rises to the top as it dries. The better the paint, the less pin holing you should have. It used to be that if latex paint was shaken at the paint store you would have to allow it to settle for a few hours. This really is no longer the case with better paints, which may 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 stick and dry in temps from 50°F to 120°F. With added coalescents and, believe it or not, antifreeze, some latexes can be employed in the same temperature range, and even lower. Some exterior latexes can be securely applied at heat 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 temps. Because the wetting agents have been removed, the latex dries faster.
UV blocking chemicals have been put into 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 adds to the expansion and contraction process which makes paint crack and peel. UV blockers in paint may contain finely ground metals and ground glass which is now being added for even more reflection of natural sunlight.
If you live in an area with lots of humidity, rainwater, 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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