Thread: Looking for a cheap Water-based Lacquer?

If you are looking for speed, forget anything water bassed.

I also would not expect any of the water bassed laquers would be suitable for arrows....in that they will be too soft and too thick.

when you say "laquer"....do you know what that means?

neither estipol or CPF are laquers.

If you are trying to do what I think you are trying to do, you will be better off with a thinners or alcahol bassed product.

You need a thin, hard finish, that penetrates and dries fast..and I mean fast.

Why the particular need for a water borne product?

cheers

Lacquer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

while the wiki is more or less correct....there is some information that may be hard for the layman to understand and a couple of statements that if taken the wrong way could lead to false expectations.

simply a laquer is a resin finish that works primarily by solvent evaporation, as apposed to a varnish which will generally work by polymerisation.
Two pack products are a whole other story.

Polyeurathane varnishes like estipol and most of the consumer and building industry clear finishes are not laquers.

Here is why it makes a difference.

The laquers are generaly made up of short chain resins...relativly simple chemicals.....as such that can be thinned very agressivey with solvent to make them penetrate, flow and dry quickly. (70% and higher solvent in the sprayed mix is not unusual)
Because they work by a relativly simple mechanism of drying, thay can be made to dry and cure out very fast....there is very little if any long term curing process
AND
They can be applied in very thin coats and still remain viable.

Varnishes in particular polyeurathane are made of long chain molecules and generally tolerete thinning poorly....many starting to misbehave if thinned more than 10% from what is in the can.
The films are relativly thick and generally that take time to cure out after drying.
Common or garden polyeurathane taking 24 to 36 hours to reach a reasonable state of cure.
The poorer varnishes continue to cure thru their life till the finish crazes and fails.

laquers will generally redisolve in the approprate solvent, where as varnishes will not.

Which brings up a serious advantage.......if you stuff up with laquer, you can wash it off and start again.

As for water borne laquers being common in wood working ( as the wiki says)....Um yeh not realy, and all the water laquers and varnishes have their issues.

The good ones wont be cheap.

So.......if you want fast and cheap.......thinners bassed laquer is the way to go.

To give you an idea how fast.....a mate of mine recons he can get 4 coats of nitro on a piano in a day, if he gets up early and the weather is good.

I often use black nitro, and in warm weather you can spray an item, wait 5 minutes and hand it to the customer.

cheers

I've no idea what SaxonPathfinder wants to do with arrows, but I for one have just learnt loads from Soundman's explanation.

Thanks for posting that.