"dpb" wrote
| Well, I guess they sorta' answered the question within a certain set of | boundaries although why one would ever suggest using stain over paint of | any variety puzzles me greatly. |
Have you used solid stain? If not you may be making a false assumption. It has nothing to do with the normal idea of stain. It just refers to a kind of non-enamel paint that wears away instead of peeling. Solid oil stain became very popular from the 80s until the EPA restrictions, for use on both fresh wood and over old paint. With each paint job, whatever has been scraped won't need to be scraped next time. Eventually it's just all stain, with virtually no scraping required.
Acrylic stains have improved, like acrylic paint. They're *very* adhesive. (A nightmare to clean up a spill after it's had a few seconds to dry.) So they can go over oil paint. There's not much choice, anyway, since there are really no oil paints left for general housepainting. Like the oil-base solid stain, it will wear rather than peeling, so that any scraped paint won't need to be scraped again.
The down side of solid stains is that they have a dull finish and wear away. Our house has asbestos siding. I use solid acrylic stain on that. I use solid oil (Cabot's) stain on the deck and on the decorative fence I built.
Solid oil stain is my preference for siding, but I'm not sure whether I can still get it. One store seems to stock it. Others don't. But that's also confused by BM. BM pays paint stores not to display other products. (Paint stores near me that sell Cabot's have told me they're not allowed to put it on the shelves due to an agreement with BM. I wrote to Cabot's about that, but got no response.) So I'm not clear about exactly what the status is with Cabot's solid oil stains. And I'm unaware of any other company still making solid oil stain.
I think it's a good idea to spot-prime with linseed oil primer, but it's not necessary. The stain soaks in somewhat and sticks well. In fact, the first time I ever used acrylic solid stain was on a fence I built of rough spruce. Very wet. I watered down the stain and just soaked the fence with it. Worked well. :)
| But why limit to stain, leaving out paint entirely??? |
I think it was just their recommendation, though I am surprised they didn't mention paint as an option. Maybe because a fence was involved. As noted elsewhere, solid stain has less manitenance in the long run. The reason for paint would mainly be elegance -- where one wants a smooth gloss finish. But I would avoid paint on something like a fence. It will peel. If I had to paint a fresh wood fence now I'd go with thinned down linseed oil primer followed by acrylic solid stain. Maybe not an ideal solution, but the EPA has left us with few ideal solutions. The technology just hasn't caught up with the restrictions. If I wanted a snazzy gloss finish on a fence I wouldn't know what to use. There are no longer any durable options.