Thompsons WaterSeal Advanced has been on the market for a couple of years. The label promises "Easy soap & water clean-up," the product apparently reformulated so as to comply with European Union regulations restricting volatiles.
In practice, soap and water cleanup is by no means "easy." The product contains some sort of wax that repels water (and I dare say makes it effective on timber.) But what sort of solvent can actually dissolve this component so we can clean our brushes for reuse?
If there's no additional info at the Thompson site, I'd suggest looking at the MSDS and see what is listed as the additive active ingredients.
Or, the simple expedient of starting with the various normal painting solvents and experiment.
Generally, however, I'd think after the most basic of rinsing out the "warm water and soap/detergent rule" should be effective as a first guess of the order of the above solvents...
I was going to suggest mineral spirits, as it is most used as solvent for paste waxes, but decided to look further. Thompson's website sucks, and I could not find MSDS, but here is a link to more clean-up:
For DRIED overspray, they suggest mineral spirits or paint thinner.
One of the reasons why it can be hard to remove water wash-up coatings from a paint brush is because the wet coating gets drawn high up into the "heel" of the brush by capillary pressure. The stuff that gets drawn up into that area where the bristles are tightly packed together will dry there while you're painting and result in "shaggy dog" paint brushes where the bristles are spread out and the heel of the brush is hard as a rock.
One way to avoid that problem is to wash the brush out in water and shaking out the excess water BEFORE using it, and to periodically add some water to the bristles near the ferrule using an eye dropper.
Doing that ensures that there's water high up in the bristles which will prevent the water-clean-up coating you're applying from drying up and hardening in that area, thereby ruining the paint brush.
You can buy an eye dropper for less than $2 at any pharmacy.
If your brush is already hard with dried up stuff, I would dip the brush bristles in acetone or lacquer thinner, working the brush bristles after each dipping. Don't just leave the brush bristles soaking in either solvent. I expect both solvents would probably dissolve the Thompson's Water seal but you can check to see which one works better by dipping a Q-tip in either solvent and using that wet Q-tip to clean a small area of that Thompson's water seal. Clean in an area where light reflects off the Thompson water seal. If the solvent dissolves the stuff, the surface of the area you cleaned will be rough and will scatter light diffusely rather than specularly. That is, the cleaned surface will be dull instead of glossy.
I used a paint roller to apply mine last year and just rinsed it off when done. It was good enough to use this year and will be used next year.
Hey Don,
Did you ever get a sufficient answer? Which worked best for you? Also, I'm going to be using this product for the first time. In fact, it will be my first time using any type of water sealer. What kind of brush is recommended to apply Advanced?
replying to Don Phillipson, Nancy wrote: We are having the same issue. Did you get any info on cleaning the roller/brush?
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