Why do painted surfaces stick together?

[Oren]

Set the hook, somebody!

[JoeSpareBedroom]

JoeSpareBedroom:

White.

[RicodJour]

Gee, what a surprise. They must've added a ton of colorant to get it white, huh? ;)

It was a hot as hell summer in NY. I'm on Long Island, and I could swear I heard the bay water boiling. I''m glad I didn't have to do any painting during that heat wave. Where in western NY are you?

R

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Gee, what a surprise. They must've added a ton of colorant to get it white, huh? ;)

It was a hot as hell summer in NY. I'm on Long Island, and I could swear I heard the bay water boiling. I''m glad I didn't have to do any painting during that heat wave. Where in western NY are you?

R

===============

Rochester. "Just past Yonkers", as my former boss believed. I'm originally from LI. He was annoyed that I never visited his place of business in Syosset. I bought him a map of the state.

[RicodJour]

Come on - what's a little ten hour round trip drive between friends? :)

R

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Come on - what's a little ten hour round trip drive between friends? :)

R ============

Ten??? More like 16 these days. I drove down there back in June and hit the TZ bridge at 4:00 AM on a Sunday. The traffic was still bullshit all the way through Westchester, the Throgs Neck and into Nassau County.

[Vic Smith]

I painted more double-hung windows then I want to think about. A 1/8" crack in the glazing was all I needed to redo a window. A broken sash cord meant new chains and a complete window refurb. Back then Ben Moore primer and gloss was the ticket. All oil. I'd cut out soft spots and fit with new wood. I'd replenish dried up wood with boiled linseed oil rubs. Ah, the smell of boiled linseed oil! The effortless sliding of a well-balanced and fitted window! Those were the days!

Then in '97 I bought my current and probably last house. Built in '59. The windows were already needing some work. Two years later they were looking worse. I resolved to tackle them next year. The next year they were even worse, but I managed to put my past behind me, and ignore them. It hurt a little. As the years went by I tuckpointed, put on a new roof, electrical service and central air. I did put on 2 triple-track storms where I pulled the 2 big window A/C units. Screwed one in so it was binding from the get-go too. Didn't even paint and reglaze the windows first. Didn't refit the binding triple-track either. Felt pretty bad about all that.

As the years went by my wife's garden flourished, the town put new sidewalks in, redid the street and put in all new curbs. My house looked real nice - except for the windows. Every year the windows looked worse, just terrible. I felt bad when I looked at them. But not real, real bad. Pretty easy to think about something else. The triple-tracks storms were in bad shape too. Latches broken off, binding, sweating and icing in the winter.

My wife never complained about me not doing the windows, because she wanted swing out casement windows. She hated the double-hung windows. I swore by double-hung. All I ever knew. No way I would pay for new windows when I already had windows. That's just silly. Every year I told her she'd like them when I fixed everything up. She just smiled or frowned, depending. And I felt guilty every fall past painting season because I hadn't done a thing with the windows. Wasn't too hard to put the guilt aside pretty quick, but it would pick up again in the spring.

Then I heard from family about a guy who worked in a factory that made vinyl-clad thermopane windows, and had a side business installing them. Cheap. Compared to the big outfits, real cheap. Had him over, had the wife select what windows she wanted, and all my window problems were gone in a couple days.

26 windows - every one, including the basements. All window maintenance gone. Frames flashed with white aluminum. Cost 4500 President Washingtons, and worth every one. Been about 5 years and all the windows look good, work fine, there's no drafts and my heating bill isn't worth talking about. I sleep well once again.

It's real nice not having those old windows nagging me. But the best part was how proud I feel when I think about how lazy I was never painting those old windows. Didn't expect that bonus. First time being lazy worked out for me. Not that I recommend that, but you should give it some thought.

--Vic

[notbob]

LOL!......

great story.

nb

[The Daring Dufas]

I'm referring to a little saw wax not liquid wax. I don't think a touch of wax from a wax stick will destroy a paint job or make it hard to repaint at a later time.

TDD

[Red Green]

"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in news:Ykiwo.779$ [e-mail]:

I've always figured latex paint takes a month to dry.

I did some metal garage doors this summer. Door sections have an overlap. Left the overlaps separated and let dry for a day. Put petroleum jelly on the joints. Worked out well.

[Red Green]

Red Green wrote in news:Xns9E1B63EE11BAFRedGreen@69.16.185.252:

p.s. Another thing I often use on a multitude of things I don't want to stick is a piece of waxed paper. Clamping things that were glued is a frequent flyer.

[Robert Green]

Nestor, since you seem to be quite knowledgeable about adhesion technolgy, I have a question I hope you can answer. I have several large sheets of very expensive Plexiglas I bought for a project in 1984. Now that I am getting around to it (there's a l-o-n-g lead time around here!) I find that I cannot remove the protecting paper. It's immune to water, soaking, and nearly every solvent I have tried. It's stuck tight.

Do you (or does anyone else) know how to remove the brown protective paper after it's been sitting for 25 years?

-- Bobby G.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

I've removed ancient bumper stickers using vegetable oil. Might be worth a try. It needs to soak for a length of time known as X, where X equals "long enough".

[notbob]

Been there, wore out that t-shirt.

We had mucho plexiglass that had to be used. It was old and nothing seemed to work at getting that damn paper off. With dozens of solvents, and most any other chemical we could imagine at our fingertips, we finally settled on stoddard solvent as the best choice. It still required mucho elbow grease, but at least the solvent was of some help and didn't hurt the plastic or render us non-reproductive lifeforms. Use another piece of plexi as a scraper. If possible, work outdoors. If not, wear a respirator

I feel for you, as I know what a chore it is, but sadly, there is no easy solution, only hard work. Jes as bad, masking tape left on stainless steel to bake in the hot sun for as little as two weeks. A freakin' nightmare!

nb

[notbob]

That certainly was not my experience. I was working in CA where ambient temps were often over 100F. Not heat gun necessary. I doubt

25 yr old plexi paper will peel off "easily" with any help short of god or magic. After I posted, I got to thinking back. Some of it we jes hadda toss. That paper was jes not gonna come off, period.

nb

[RicodJour]

No, not hard, but if someone doesn't know there's wax on a surface they won't do anything to prevent the problem that will occur. Wax interferes with the adhesion of any water-based coating. Silicone interferes with water or oil based coatings. Wax is used in faux finishing circles - in many circles - as a release agent. The wax certainly will work to reduce stiction for sliding surfaces, and it's not necessarily a big deal if the person who put the wax on is the person who will be doing the subsequent painting. But very few painters, pro or amateur, routinely dewax/degrease a surface, particularly in this day of self-priming, sticks to gloss paint, paints - and sanding doesn't remove all traces of wax. There will be fish-eyes.

The OP said that he had casement windows, so there's really not a lot of sliding going on. The problem is due to paint buildup. Over time, paint build up will interfere with hinge and latch operations. The best time to deal with potential paint buildup problems is before a window is repainted. The operating parts should be checked for clearance with a piece of paper. If the paper doesn't slide out easily when the parts are closed, the window is too tight to repaint without some sanding.

R

[Higgs Boson]

Hey, thanks for that great mini-seminar on paints! It will be very helpful as I choose indoor/outdoor, stucco/wood paints.

And I'mwith you on the "...movement for change in Iran"; those people risk a lot; they have cojones of steel, if we can say that of the women resisters who often take the biggest risks.

HB

[Robert Green]

Jeez. I was hoping for another great Usenet substance discovery like adhesive-lined heat shrink tubing or automobile starter spray for anesthetizing small critters needing relocation or 2 in one slot circuit breakers.

Plexi-off or something like that. What about wallpaper remover? I seem to remember as you peeled off the paper there was a rubbery sort of film that was between plastic and paper. Seems like that's cured into armor.

Working with it I felt like I was in a scifi movie trying to break into an alien space ship that looked like it was made of garbage bag paper but was really harder than diamonds. This isn't fair. I have some big 20 by 24" trays to soak the smaller pieces in, but one piece is a full 4' by 8' by

3/8" This may be one of those times where I just put it on Craig's list and buy new stuff and hope to be around 25 years from now to worry about it again. (-:

Let's hope you were the last to suffer such a fate and they now have the solution, figuratively and literally.

Thanks for your input!

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

Well, I sure have enough of it to try some. This stuff doesn't even get wet. It's like three atoms thick of pure diamond. It's laminated, too, so you can peel the printing off and have even MORE of a mess.

Thanks,

-- Bobby G.

[aemeijers]

Is this that infamous table saw again? Or was that somebody else?