waterborne finishes

[michael_schwartz]

I am planning on making the switch to WB finishing products as I feel I don't have much to loose. My current finishing schedule consists of off the shelf "homeowner oriented" products. For lack of a proper spray booth, and with zoning/environmental regulations spraying solvents would be a no go.

I avoid staining wood to begin with so I am not too concerned that WB stain products are still behind the curb a bit.

I don't intend to start political debate however the market in my area also demands low VOC products.

I have ordered a conversion gun setup for waterborne finishes from homestead finishing products. I have also ordered a range of waterborne products from Target Coatings to experiment with.

I am interested in what WB products people are using. Everybody seems to have a favorite product that they feel strongly about. I am well aware of the fact that WB finishes draw praise, as well as strong criticism.

I am looking forward to sharing the results and my experience with the expected learning curve in the coming weeks/months.

[gc3]

We use Target Coatings and Crystalac finishes. There will be a small learning curve with your spray technique, we use the Fuji HVLP system which works very well...keep several different tips on hand. If you are using a standard compressor with the conversion gun be careful about oil/water contamination, use a good filter. The grain raising effect is much more pronounced with waterbournes than oils so you will probally need to adjust the finish schedule some. Need to be careful about what types of sandpaper you use. Living where you do you are also going to need to keep the waterbornes from freezing and will need to be careful about spraying on a falling temperature. If you look on woodweb there are many threads about these finishes...one great idea I took from a woodweb post was using a old fridge to keep finishes at a constant temp with a light bulb or two inside, only where we live we use the fridge to keep it cool! After we made the switch several years ago we never looked back....so much easier to use.

http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/finishing.pl