Looks like I picked the wrong time to fall in love with Zinsser B-I-N shellac based primer. Or maybe the right time.... hmmm....
So I'm in the paint store, yesterday, and the guy tells me that 18 months ago, a gallon of BIN was only 18 bucks, then a year ago it went up to about $25. It's about $40, now, and still worth every penny in my book. Must be a shortage of bug spit in the far east.
So, I'm left to wonder.... if I discovered this stuff back when it was under 20 bucks, would I stop using it now that it doubled in price? I don't know, but after spraying oil paint and waiting days for it to dry, I'm thinking shellac for everything, now.
With a gallon of good oil enamel going for more than $40 (contractor price), I'm tempted to just use BIN for everything I want white... and heck, it's tintable, so why not for colors, too? Anyone ever tint BIN and use it for a final coat? I knew a trim painter who used to paint everything satin, then spray gloss lacquer over the trim he wanted glossy.
Rustoleum is the owner of Zinsser.. It might be corporate greed. Or there may have been a problem with the lac bugs. Also remember that India is going from a third world nation to a technical nation. And many of the people that harvest the bug and process the lac to shellac may be dwindling in numbers going for more money per hour. Or just pushing the price up so they can live better.
I don't think so. BIN is the stuff... I use it as primer as much as possible. And it sprays unthinned better than anything I have ever used.
If you are waiting days for your oils to dry, switch to some of the high VOC enamels that are out there. Dry to the touch in 20 minutes, recoat (depending on the product) in an hour, up to 4 coats a day with favorable conditions. Get with Sherwin Williams, they are the guys that got me on their product lines of that stuff and I love it. I can two coat a metal door (no product solvent absorption to speed up drying) and is ready to close at the end of the day with no problems.
Shellac has its place, but is has neither the water resistance, the abrasion resistance, chemical resistance, the UV resistance nor the ability to not "amber" for most applications. Great for home use, great as a sealer, but not in most commercial applications. You should see what cleaning agents used by cleaning companies do to it. I refinished an interior door that was about a year old that had a good thick coat of shellac on it. The door was pretty, but where they used cleaners to remove hand prints the finish came off and the chemicals stained the wood. (Betcha it was 409... )
I know you are being tongue in cheek, but for those that don't get the joke, I love the stuff, too. But it is an extremely porous, extremely soft surface that is left when it dries. That's a couple of the reasons BIN is so good at what it does. But it suffers the same problems as mentioned above, only more so. It doesn't have the resins nor the compounds in it to make it a top coat.
That's probably because getting a 100% perfect reflectivity of sheen can be quite hard in a production environment. Satin is easy to spray. Lacquer is much easier to spray than oil based enamel, so combining the two make sense as long as they are compatible. Most paint suppliers don't support applying to dissimilar products to each other, but that has never stopped anyone before.
If you are waiting days for your oils to dry, switch to some of the high VOC enamels that are out there.
--------------------------------------------------- That will never happen in CA and understand it is getting more difficult to get oil based product in the rest of the country.
I understand air pollution regulations are a little loosey-goosey in the lone star state so maybe you have easier access to high VOC product.
I have read the horror stories and listened to the reps talk. Doesn't sound good.
Right now, so far, so good. The industry is kind of policing itself here as so many WON'T use high VOC enamels due to the insurance cost and the liabilities. Plus, you can't use them on jobsites as the tenants or homeowners won't put up with the odors. When I spray, I do it in the morning and by the end of the day the fumes have dissipated.
And since most of the folks that can site apply oil successfully are very much a dying breed, the practice is just dying out by itself.
-------------------------------------------------- It's been particularly difficult for the marine industry as well as the petro market that rely on epoxy based VOC product for "tank resin" to shoot the inside of tanks.
Same product was used to shoot high build primer for an LP job.
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